Live data from Hacker News

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

thehill.com

411–420 of 521 posts

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

#411

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…

More precisely, the majority of the US Senate (republican) opposes another large COVID bill. In contrast, the majority of the US House (democrat) has proposed new bills at between $2-3 trillion.

The GOP is currently under control of the current President. Until he leaves, they will not act independently. After January 20 (and after the Georgia Senator runoffs are over), republicans will fear Trump's wrath less. But will that be enough to shift those politicians' sentiment? Only the impact of enough lives lost to COVID in the next two months will tell.

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

#412
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this not a HIPAA violation? HIPAA is a US law that's focused on protecting the privacy of a person's medical history. In SQL terms you can't JOIN a person's identity with their medical history (unless explicitly authorized). However aggregated data is allowed, as long as it can't be easily reverse-engineered.

You acknowledge that HIPAA doesn’t allow identifying specific patients. Are you under the impression that she named a identified a specific person in that article?

Sorry, I should have edited. This is why the article is NOT a HIPAA violation. Damn you slack distractions

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Snow Crash is out in the wild. Did he seem "normal" outside the covid stuff>

> I guess Snow Crash is out in the wild. I had to look this up, I presume this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash If you have a minute, can you please expand on your statement? It seems very interesting! > Did he seem "normal" outside the covid stuff We have yet to correspond extensively, but so far it's been pretty typical catching up after 25 years stuff, except as noted. I'm going to try to very carefully g…

Snow Crash refers to a virus, that in the book, only works on "hackers", since their brains understand code, and just need to see the raw bitmap of it for their brain to stop working.

The book contains alot of analysis on the nature of information and how it spreads, and the methods in which you can literally re-program a person with language.

I think its an apt analogy, your buddy is a programmer that has been exposed to Snow Crash, a virus of misinformation, and has shut down a part of his functioning.

======

"You're a hacker, that means you have deep structures to worry about, too."

"Deep structures?"

"Neurolinguistic pathways in your brain. Remember the first time you learned binary code?"

"Sure."

"You were forming pathways in your brain. Deep structures. Your nerves grow new connections as you use them - the axons split and pushed their way between the dividing glial cells - your bioware self-modifies - the software becomes a part of the hardware. So now you're vulnerable - all hackers are vulnerable - to a nam-shub. We have to look out for each other."

"What's a nam-shub? Why am I vulnerable to it?"

"Just don't stare into any bitmaps..."

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I see this perspective a lot on social media and I think it just adds to the corona response culture shock. No one ever seems to understand each other better when this is brought up. People seem to always assume/project the other party is controlled by high levels of anxiety around using masks when in reality I see most people know that distancing/masks are a risk mitigation technique (NOT a one-stop-fix, but a risk…

distancing (indoors), yes. masks everywhere, not so much.

it’s important to dig into these nuances to dispel the anxiety and fear we have against each other (like feeling violated). and lockdowns (in the US at least) are political theater, accruing benefit to a few and wreaking discriminate havoc on the many. the mediopolitical apparatus deserves that blame, not the vilified ‘other’.

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

#415

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…

My experience on a similar trip was that virus diligence bottomed out in the Dakotas. I went to a restaurant, and their mask warning said something to the effect of "please wear a mask, if you don't we'll assume you have a health condition." Of course, the restaurant was filled to capacity without a mask in sight.

You can't wear a mask while eating or drinking. What else did you expect?

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

#416
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think they're good and smart, why do they think Covid19 is a hoax? Surely a good person would try to do the safe thing even if they had doubts.

Not the original poster, but I would imagine it echos what I have seen (and believe myself) in that it’s not a hoax as is normally defined, but a mass hysteria fueled by a media that needs clicks to survive. The risks are real for certain demographics, we need to take precautions to help vulnerable people, etc. however the unintended consequences of drastic policies are economic hardship, creating a new generation of…

> If some misguided old people in the Midwest want to pretend they are not at risk, it’s their life and their body to do that with. Sucks for the healthcare workers tasked with dealing with that, but you can’t legislate away life, risk, etc.

I think we do legislate away life and risk quite a lot. I imagine you may have already heard the arguments about laws for seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, and more. Even suicide is illegal.

> From what I can tell a huge portion of the United States is engaged in a mass delusion, and is actively handing over all the prosperity for the next decade to large corporations who benefit from COVID, while risking the future of kids with mostly worthless remote learning.

For me, this hits on where I think the US government has failed the most. I believe we should treat this virus seriously and I also believe we should treat the economic crisis seriously. I believe we need not only medical interventions but economic ones and it baffles me the US Congress has not created and approved a new stimulus package.

In summary, I think some people only focus on the medical crisis, others focus on the economic crisis, and that we would probably resolve this a lot better if we provided help both medically and economically.

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

#417
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I oppose lockdown/shut down, doesn't mean I don't believe that covid is real, nor I believe there is 0 risk from covid but simply I'm comparing the cost/risk of lockdown vs cost/risk of covid. I acknowledge though that this cost/risk can be very subjective.

So what do you think of intensive care bed running out and people dying at the hospital entrances like in Italy? Also, what is the cost you speak about? How many minutes of Bezos income? How many F35? How many days of US budget deficit? I mean avoiding lockdown is possible at a certain time. After a certain threshold of infection it becomes unavoidable. But lockdown or no lockdown, this must be done right. A few plac…

>So what do you think of intensive care bed running out and people dying at the hospital entrances like in Italy?

It is bad, I didn't say nothing should be done about it. Some that can be done: Increasing intensive care capacity, redistribute capacity to other hospital, do not admit patient with mild symptom, increasing effort for better treatment/vaccine, etc.

I'm still open to lockdown but certainly not for this virus. Doesn't make sense if the cure is worse than the disease.

Keep in mind vast majority cases is asymptomatic or only have mild symptomp.

cdc estimate of the ifr : https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

0-19 years: 0.00003

20-49 years: 0.0002

50-69 years: 0.005

70+ years: 0.054

Its very low.

>Also, what is the cost you speak about?

Lockdown cost: unemployment, bankruptcy, mental health issue, kids receiving poor education because they can't go to school, delayed treatment for other diseases, suicides, domestic violence, etc

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

#418
post #401
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

calling this facial recognition is a bit of stretch when its more akin to "is a mask present?", not trying to match to people in a database. No different then self driving cars detecting a pedestrian. very far from unethical (although i would hope they would make an effort to accommodate all skin colors to not unintentionally discriminate against anyone.)

> not trying to match to people in a database Are you sure it’s not building one?

What is it going to record? "Dude with a mask" ?

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

#419
post #296
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think we can all agree (and I don't have to prove) that if nobody would ever meet anyone outside their home there would be 0 infections. So that would be the ideal. We could have states just mandate very strict shelter in place. Would you like that? Probably not, in which case we have to allow people to get outside their homes. When we do that we come up with rules to try to minimize infection rates, distance and m…

> I think we can all agree (and I don't have to prove) that if nobody would ever meet anyone outside their home there would be 0 infections. So that would be the ideal. We could have states just mandate very strict shelter in place. Would you like that?

Absolutely. If we were really serious about beating the virus, that's exactly what we would do: Real and strictly enforced stay-at home, and mask wearing for exceptional cases when you had to go out. Coordinated nationally so we didn't have this healthy state - sick state problem. Then stick with it until it succeeded. It would be temporarily economically painful, and people would complain about their freedom to get their nails done and eat at Olive Garden, but we'd get the public health benefit and come out the other side not-dead.

Instead, we managed to do an even worse thing: Announce half-assed "business closures" and stay-at-home orders (more like suggestions), uncoordinated with other states, and unenforced, which gave us the negative economic effects and did not provide the health benefit. To top it off, we opened up way too early, causing this yo-yo effect where cases predictably spike after re-opening, causing re-closing, then a rush to re-open because economy, then another spike, then an inevitable re-close, and on and on.

Unless the vaccines pan out, we're going to be in this exact situation a year from now. Constantly re-opening, faking surprise at the cases spiking, and then re-closing.

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

#420

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…

More precisely, the majority of the US Senate (republican) opposes another large COVID bill. In contrast, the majority of the US House (democrat) has proposed new bills at between $2-3 trillion. The GOP is currently under control of the current President. Until he leaves, they will not act independently. After January 20 (and after the Georgia Senator runoffs are over), republicans will fear Trump's wrath less. But w…

But why does the Republican majority oppose another large COVID bill? I guess I just haven't heard or understand their arguments for why they think giving more economic stimulus would be a bad thing.

- Is it a moral one? "Giving money makes people lazy, people should work for their money."

- Is it a financial one? "If we give more money, this country will go further into debt."

- Loyalty/obedience to Trump?

- Something else?

I'm just so confused...

Post reply on HN