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Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

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Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#331

Post by therealcamino »

therealcamino wrote: post #185
vnchr wrote: post #34

Well, that’s some fear mongering. The article is all anecdotes. Most of the nurses and doctors they talked to are anonymous sources. According to the AHA[1], there are 6,146 hospitals in the US. There are 68,000 confirmed covid-19 cases in the US, and 33,000 of those cases are all in New York—almost 10x more than the next states (4.4k NJ, 3.2k CA)[2]. I don’t know the rate of hospitalization for the infected, but sym…

After the hospitals in Wuhan were quickly overwhelmed, we apparently thought it wouldn't happen outside China. After the hospitals in Lombardy were overwhelmed, apparently lots of people in the US thought it couldn't happen in New York like it happened in Italy. So I don't think the argument "It can't happen in NJ the way it is happening in NY" is a convincing one, it's just wishful thinking. The tragic thing is that…

And now it's later today, and the increase in confirmed NJ cases is 2,492, or 56% in a single day.

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/03/nj-coronavirus-outbre...

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#332

Post by jfnixon »

cycomanic wrote: post #316
rootusrootus wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using global statistics Let's keep it real, the flu infection rate given by the CDC is hindsight knowledge. The real time "global statistics" for COVID19 are with vastly restricted testing. There's not really a valid comparison to be made at this point.

Exactly everyone who is quoting numbers for flu deaths needs to realise these are estimates based on the statistics of how deaths vary year to year, i. e. looking at how many more people died in a flu year compared to other years (simplified). Most people actually don't die of the flu itself but secondary infections (the number of deaths linked directlybto the flu are orders of magnitude lower). Corona directly kills…

"Corona directly kills people"

I'm not so sure about that. Covid may grease the skids, but the vast majority of people dying have health complications already. Kids aren't dying. Teens aren't dying. 20s and 30s aren't dying in numbers. If Covid were directly killing, we'd see kids dying.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#333

Post by cycomanic »

jfnixon wrote: post #332
cycomanic wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly everyone who is quoting numbers for flu deaths needs to realise these are estimates based on the statistics of how deaths vary year to year, i. e. looking at how many more people died in a flu year compared to other years (simplified). Most people actually don't die of the flu itself but secondary infections (the number of deaths linked directlybto the flu are orders of magnitude lower). Corona directly kills…

"Corona directly kills people" I'm not so sure about that. Covid may grease the skids, but the vast majority of people dying have health complications already. Kids aren't dying. Teens aren't dying. 20s and 30s aren't dying in numbers. If Covid were directly killing, we'd see kids dying.

That does not follow. Yes the majority of people have preexisting health conditions, but they die directly of the pneumonia that is a result of COVID-19. For the flu, people typically die of secondary infections, e.g. bacterial pneumonia. Someone younger without pre-existing conditions is just much stronger to fight off the infection.

Regarding children, this is actually one of the many questions that is not fully understood, why do children not get so severe symptoms (initial thoughts were they might not even get infected, but this has been disproven by recent studies).

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#334

Post by DanBC »

brenden2 wrote: post #251
DanBC wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Italy; look at Spain. These are not unreasonable extrapolations.

Neither of them have exponential growth. The rate of growth has steadily decreased after the first initial spike of cases.

Of deaths? Here's Spain. They implemented lockdown on about the 7th of March.

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/

   8th   17 deaths
  11th   55 
  14th  196 
  17th  533
  20th 1093
  23rd 2311
  26th 4365

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#335

Post by gridlockd »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #267
viklove wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim has not been made in error. If he has never experienced the flu, but has experienced symptoms from the flu shot, then the statement "the flu shot has been worse than the flu" is 100% true.

I am not claiming I had the flu. What I am saying is that the flu shots made me more miserable than any cold/flu I ever had. I am very reluctant to intentionally make myself sick for a few days every year.

That's an important distinction. You may never have had the flu in the first place.

In that case, it would be like saying "my reaction to the vaccine was worse than any infection I never had".

That is equivalent to "my reaction to the vaccine was worse than my reaction to nothing", or more simply "I had a negative reaction to the vaccine". Fair enough, there's no questioning that.

Now, if you had ever had an actual Influenza infection, my guess would be that you would prefer the vaccine. If you react that strongly to just the vaccine, why should you react less strongly to the actual virus? To be on the safer side, why not just assume that the actual virus would completely overwhelm you?

> I am very reluctant to intentionally make myself sick for a few days every year.

That's the tradeoff. Feel miserable for a few days per year versus taking the risk of contracting a severe infection and potentially being dead for the remaining years of your life.

To complicate the matter, flu vaccines are only about 50% effective, though I'm told they help even with actual infections.

I'm not telling you what to do, except to re-evaluate your thinking on the matter.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#336

Post by jacobush »

gnulinux wrote: post #282
simonh wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not literally everyone. There were a few people writing it off as a 'scare' and a 'hoax'.

For example, the president of the United States.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TZ6fTYrsE "we lost nobody"

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#337

Post by smcl »

tropo wrote: post #329
smcl wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same party that has been scaremongering against socialised healthcare saying it involves "death panels".

The only thing untrue is that we'd officially call them something else. You don't have "death panels" if you call them "community wellness committees". There is no economy anywhere in the world that can support an infinite demand for healthcare. We keep inventing new healthcare too, so it only gets worse. There will be limits to healthcare, though we can lie to ourselves about that. If we don't place a price on life,…

But by that logic all private healthcare providers like in the US are death panels?

The rest of your comment was a wild ride. You're inventing a fictional socialised healthcare system (overwhelmed, hopelessly overbudget and reliant on political connections for treatment) and then declaring that some fictional market is better. But we don't need to invent fictional systems to compare and see whether this is true - both of these exist in reality. And in reality US's "markets" comprise a healthcare system which is infamous for being horrendously unfair, overpriced and corrupt. You are free to pick any developed country to compare to - it won't matter, the ones with better outcomes and lower expenditures will be those with socialised healthcare.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#338

Post by dwild »

thu2111 wrote: post #323
dwild wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact in Vo it was zero. Isn't it a bit disingenuous to use a city with 89 cases as being statistically significant?

Vo has 3000 inhabitants, it's not a city, that's why they could completely isolate it and test every single inhabitant. It gives a 'random' sample, unlike other testing regimens. The population size isn't that big indeed, but it's still multiple times larger than the cruise ship.

> Vo has 3000 inhabitants,

How can you consider the fatality rate over an uninfected population? A year ago 8 billion peoples were not infected and 0 died! I have no idea why we worry. /s

What's matter for the fatality rate is the 89 persons infected, which isn't statistically significant.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#339

Post by TomMckenny »

downerending wrote: post #308
TomMckenny wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But trends in suicide including economic causes are handled by epidemiology[1] It is great that attention is now being paid to this subject. Although the overall suicide rate has continued to _rise_ in spite of 11 years of a rising DOW, the suicide rate among those approaching retirement has risen significantly in the last decades. From past trends we know this is directly related to social security[2]. I sincerely h…

No doubt, but we need more than just epidemiologists to project how complex changes in the world economy will affect suicide. For example, how can the various interventions possible by the US Fed affect the economic well-being of the poor? Etc. We need all of our experts on this, including the political ones, who have a good sense of what will fly and what won't. No doubt social security (Social Security?) does affec…

In principle that makes perfect sense. And it is important to note that there is another choice other than the two we are given: the one the Europeans have chosen: employee protection/compensation along with any corporate bailouts.

If for political reasons we refuse the European approach then the concern is not that fatality counts and epidemiologist will be balanced by economist but that epidemiologist and economists will be balanced by lobbyists.

As if to underscore this point, the order for 80,000 ventilators[1] was stopped yesterday on grounds that it was too expensive[2]. The cost at 1 billion is equivalent to 1/4 to 1/12 of 1% of the total F-35 order at 428 to 1196 billion [3] And the f-35 order is already controversial to begin with.

[1] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12417326813664829...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/us/politics/coronavirus-v...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#340

Post by beepboopbeep »

dang wrote: post #326
beepboopbeep wrote: post #15

The American people are at the mercy of a rudderless death cult, and have increasingly been so over the past decade. It's coming to a head now. Oh, it seems I've been flagged.

The comment was rightly flagged. Please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments to HN. You've done it a lot, and we ban accounts that keep doing this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694149 .

I'm sorry the truth of the matter is considered "unsubstantive". Judging by the comments below, I'd argue there is a clear truth to my statements. Feel free to ban me at any time.
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