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South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

thehill.com

391–400 of 521 posts

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#391
In the US we seem to either focus on the medical crisis or the economic crisis. I wish we would focus on both.

How I understand it, how to resolve this would require medical interventions (shutdowns, testing, tracing, therapies, vaccines, etc) and economic interventions (stimulus, deferrals, forgiveness, etc) and yet we seem to mostly be doing the medical ones and getting pushback on it.

I could be wrong on this, but I think one of few institutions in this country that can provide economic interventions is the US Congress. They provided one stimulus bill that helped to provide the economic safety net while we worked on the medical safety net. It shocks and angers me that they haven't provided another one.

I struggle to see why they don't provide more economic stimulus. HN, can you help me understand why Congress isn't providing more financial help to the country?

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#392
post #273
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of it is due to private gatherings without masks, gyms, and maybe bars and restaurants. From what I can tell (I'm just staying home), people maybe did backyard gatherings when it was nice enough out, but moved indoors and that's gotten a lot of people sick.

> Much of it is due to private gatherings without masks, gyms, and maybe bars and restaurants. Prove it. When cases go down, it’s because of masks. When they go up in the same place, it’s because people suddenly stopped wearing them , but no proof is provided for either assertion.

This is what https://www.oregon.gov/oha/Pages/index.aspx and our county health program here in Deschutes county are saying. They seem pretty reliable and objective.

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find people not wearing masks much more alarming than people not wearing them. I am much more alarmed at the prospect of mass death than people wearing jaunty masks.

In Sweden, where there's little mandated, so far only some 6000 out of 10 million died of COVID-19. That is significant (in the statistical sense), but hardly mass death (given that in the relevant time frame some 40000 died of unrelated causes). Masks alone don't cause the widespread panic, mass media did their part.

In Sweden, they have socialized healthcare, strong unions, and robust social safety net, and an overall healthier population. So America should copy those things too right?

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#394

My wife and I just moved from Orange County, CA to Detroit, MI this last August. We decided to drive the northern route. Heading through Vegas, Utah, Yellowstone and Montana. Then onward through the plains of North Dakota and Minnesota. Turning north we entered Wisconsin and finally the UP (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan. After a few days exploring we turned south to Detroit. In Vegas the concern for masks started to w…

rather than moralizing angrily ('fucks'), why not try to hone in on what you're worried about exactly? were you really in danger? if you'd have focused more on the lack of distancing indoors, that might have been a legitimate concern. but masks are for show in most places, at most times, and your focus on them indicates a retreat to symbolism rather than effect. the primary appeal of masks is for quelling fear and an…

Studies so far seem to disagree with you that going to a restaurant 'isn't a significant risk'.

“...restaurants were by far the riskiest places” for new infections, “about four times riskier than gyms and coffee shops, followed by hotels,”

https://sf.eater.com/21561143/covid-19-restaurants-indoor-di...

"...case-patients were more likely to have reported dining at a restaurant (aOR = 2.4, 95% CI = 1.5–3.8) in the 2 weeks before illness onset than were control-participants."

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6936a5.htm

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#395
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The state" refers to the governing apparatus, not a particular state within the union. I understand there may be some confusion if you are not familiar with the US government and typical ways of talking about it.

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-10/ Please cite me where the power to enact a requirement to wear masks is explicitly granted to the federal government. I'll wait.

This is an amusing ask given the use of the Commerce Clause in the past couple decades to justify everything from civil rights (Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S.) to strictly intrastate marijuana trade (Gonzales v. Raich). Doesn't seem that large a stretch to bring a case to the SC claiming that requiring wearing masks is related to interstate commerce closely enough that it would be allowed under the Commerce Clause.

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#396

Can someone help me understand something? Back in March, we had ~40k new cases per day, and were seeing ~3k deaths per day. Today, we have ~140k new cases per day, but our deaths seem to be ~1k per day, and haven't risen much with rise in cases since September. What explains this? Were we not testing as much in March, and really our cases were ~200k per day? Or were the populations that got sick in March somehow diff…

A much lower fraction of the new cases today are old folk, who have a much greater likelihood of dying from it. We've also learned not to do stupid things like send infected old folk back to group homes.

We've also learned how to treat severe cases better. We have a few therapies now that we didn't then like remdesivir and antibody serum, and know when & when not to use them. But mostly we know what doesn't work well, like hydroxychloroquine and early aggressive use of ventilators.

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, what freedoms are those? Where are they enumerated in the text of the Constitution, its amendments, or the corpus of constitutional jurisprudence? Citing “the freedoms guaranteed by The Constitution” is fairly meaningless in the abstract. There are specific protections and rights afforded by the Constitution that have been defined in the actual constitutional text and whose interpretation has been refin…

The constitution on its own doesn't guarantee any freedoms, so we must look to the Bill of Rights. Does mask wearing fall under: - Freedom of speech? No. - Freedom of the press? No. - Freedom of religion? No. - Freedom of assembly? No. - Right to petition the government? No. - Right to bear arms? No. - Protection against housing soldiers in civilian homes? No. - Protection against unreasonable search and seizure? No.…

Err...isn't the Bill of Rights part of the constitution? It was added to the constitution through the amendment process, right?

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#398
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean...many uncomfortable truths ARE HIPAA violations. What makes it NOT a HIPAA violation is that it's just general/anonymized anecdata. I can't go up to someone and be like "Alice Rosenstein has cervical cancer, sorry if that's an uncomfortable truth, but the law wasn't written to protect your feelings." That would, in fact, be a HIPAA violation.

There is a difference between saying, Mrs. Jones has a bad yeast infection and there are many yeast infections this time of year. The one is giving patient information the other is discussing the disease.

Yes...that's what I said. I said the thing that makes it not a HIPAA violation is the fact that it's general data.

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch: https://mackuba.eu/corona/#indiana_united_states.daily?trend... I appreciate the contrary feedback. Do you have a link to the high mask compliance in Indiana handy? I've honestly looked for this kind of data and haven't been able to find it, and so assumed fairly poor (US-wide at least) mask wear based on anecdotes.

I've posted this elsewhere, but mask compliance in the United States is ~80%. This is of course subject to error, but both where I live and in my travels, most everyone wears a mask. This includes urban and rural areas, some with mandates some without. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/06/pandemic...

> I've posted this elsewhere, but mask compliance in the United States is ~80%

That's horseshit. I live in lefty, liberal, science-believing Silicon Valley and I see less than half the people walking on the streets wearing masks.

Re: South Dakota nurse says many dying patients still insist Covid-19 'not real'

#400

Can someone help me understand something? Back in March, we had ~40k new cases per day, and were seeing ~3k deaths per day. Today, we have ~140k new cases per day, but our deaths seem to be ~1k per day, and haven't risen much with rise in cases since September. What explains this? Were we not testing as much in March, and really our cases were ~200k per day? Or were the populations that got sick in March somehow diff…

We certainly weren't doing enough testing in the Spring to know the true case numbers.

There's a number of reasons that explain the lower death rate now.[0] The population getting infected now is younger, and less likely to die. We've also gotten much better at treating patients once they're sick enough to wind up in the hospital.

[0] https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/11/fewer-in-nj-are-dying...

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