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

thehill.com

461–470 of 521 posts

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

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mask usage is generally targeted at indoor spaces. There has been a great deal of research on outdoor spread, and it is nearly non-existent. Mask use outside is like wearing a condom after a vasectomy. Yeah, it might give you a bit more peace of mind, but it really isn't the main thing that is keeping you safe.

That is to say, I believe the survey is targeted for indoor mask usage, as this is also the mandate in most states that mandate mask wearing (while indoors, or outdoors when 6 feet is not possible)

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

#462
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Bar Association, the Commerce Clause and Public Health Service Act is what you're looking for. https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/yourab...

This article makes no claims on the constitutionality of such an act.

The PHSA is over 6 decades old, so you need to prove that is unconstitutional.

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

#463
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.

I worked with a guy named Danny many years ago. He was one of the smartest programmers I'd ever met. Not only did he write great code, but he also always maintained an excellent connection to the his customers who would use the programs he wrote. This was in a hospital. Personally, he was kind, generous, excellent family man. He never really talked too much about politics, didn't care too much for it. He also helped…

> It broke my heart. A smart, good, kind man that I knew had been brain damaged. Like some kind of fucking psychological cancer.

You're applying your view of the world to him. You're also condemning him in your mind.

How about you do this instead: you know he's a smart, honest person. Listen to his argument, see where he's coming from, and try to understand _why_ he choose that conclusion.

Nothing is all cut and dry. I do think CoV2 is a real virus, but I think our reaction to it has been absolutely disastrous. We're seeing lowering fatalities rates. Some of that is due to better treatment (early on doctors were just putting people straight onto ventilators, which was a death sentence. Since then ventilators aren't used immediately and we've seen survival go up).

With all the measures put in place, people who do get exposed are also getting low exposure, which can result in minor infections/cough/cold and quicker recovery and possibly even resistance. We've known for a while the amount of exposure matters. No one is talking about how the NYC/Michigan/Kirkland (Seattle) high death counts were directly the result of issues with elderly car facilities and cramming tons of old people into places not equipped to handle them.

I have a Bachelors and Masters degree, have published several papers, and consider myself a reasonable person, and my person view is that we are overreacting. I've been writing about it just to see if what I write tracks in 5 years:

March: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/covid-19-is-two-disease...

May: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon...

July: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/

We've watch the media go into a crazy hyper-overdrive mode on almost all information, with headlines that are contradicted by the actual text of the story. We also see zero coverage of the insane 40~50 cycles used in the current PCR tests, which generate tons of false positives. Every media outlet is focusing on "cases" but what if that "case" had minimal symptoms and required 45 PCR test cycles? That's either a very low viral load or a false positive, a good thing. But no one is covering that data.

Elon Musk found issues with the rapid test; and yes the rapid test is used for antibodies and has its limits. Instead of kindly explaining it to him, someone ranted on Twitter insulting him, implying he was a fool. But many people are buying these tests and are not aware of their limitations, so from that perspective, Elon did something good for bringing the issue to light, and he was insulted by someone who wanted to shame people into a certain narrative.

Things are super complex right now. The truth is somewhere in the middle of all the bullshit we're being fed.

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

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, start with this: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/politics/mask-mandate-fact-ch...

This article demonstrates that the federal government does not (and should not) have the power to act in this manner. CNN found a single law professor who stated this: > "I don't think that the statute can be read broadly enough to apply to all people merely moving on an interstate highway," Blackman said. "Once you go beyond people in federal facilities, you're really intruding on what the state's responsible for."…

Your comment proves the article's point. In the entire country, they could only find a single professor to say that the federal government doesn't have the power to issue a mask-mandate for occupants of vehicles on interstate highways.

Given that these roadways in question are interstate the federal government's power to regulate activity thereon is assumed as the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the constitutionally enumerated powers of the federal government.

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

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with a guy named Danny many years ago. He was one of the smartest programmers I'd ever met. Not only did he write great code, but he also always maintained an excellent connection to the his customers who would use the programs he wrote. This was in a hospital. Personally, he was kind, generous, excellent family man. He never really talked too much about politics, didn't care too much for it. He also helped…

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

I think it is, but the real virus is the Media and Big Tech. The Ministry of Truth in 1984 was government, but the version we see today is Big Tech + Big Media, backed by the political party that is encouraging the censoring and labeling of information they don't like.

You assume the nam-shub are the conspiracies, but what if it's what MSNBC/FOX/CNN are pumping into your brain?

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

#466
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way China controlled the virus is legally impossible in the United States. You simply can't confine someone to their home without due process. New Zealand is an island that, for all intents and purposes, closed their ports to human travel. Early in COVID, everyone suddenly became statisticians and had opinions on exponential growth, and while most of their proclamations were ill-informed, the truth remains that o…

> New Zealand is an island that, for all intents and purposes, closed their ports to human travel. Firstly, New Zealand is not closed to human travel. It has mandatory quarantine for inbound travelers. The US can do the same. It is in an even better situation to do so than New Zealand, because its economy is less dependant on tourism and imports. It would be utterly pointless, of course, because nearly anywhere in th…

It is also a problem of scale.

New Zealand has really 2 truly international airports (Auckland and Christchurch). The United States has over 50. In 2017, the United States saw over ~70,000,000, tourists through her ports of entry, while New Zealand saw 3,700,000 . These statistics are for tourist entries, so they don't even include repatriating citizens who traveled internationally. To institute the same quarantine rules in the United States would be untenable. Furthermore, inbound travelers to the United States _are_ supposed to quarantine for 14 days, there is just no enforcement mechanism.

And regarding the per capita infections, the most important figure is tests/1M population. We both know that testing doesn't cause infections, and tests only tell you what already exists. However, it is equally as true that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So just as some nations may be reporting lower per capita infection rates, they also have a lower per capita test rate. You can't, with a straight face, say that India, which has performed 91,359 tests per 1m has fewer cases than the United States, which has performed 516,656 tests per 1M population. Put another way, 50% of Americans have been tested at one point in the past year, whereas only 9% of Indians have been tested.

Before just shitting on everything and having strongly held opinions strongly held, actually research the data and understand the tectonics underlying the world's response. It is not nearly as black and white as you and others seem to think it is.

Tourism data from Wikipedia* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand and (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_States#2...)

Test data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

* It seems that the "Total" row for New Zealand may only be the top 12 countries, but the difference is so large that it hardly matters.

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

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, this entire thread has already been flagged into oblivion, like any other thread that HN apparently "can't handle" anymore, Sadly, that will ultimately decrease the amount of smarts working on this critical problem.

I'm also shocked at the amount of COVID downplaying, but I guess it's better than the usual "only one right opinion" you see on other controversial topics where the echo chamber is stronger. I guess I'd rather engage and debate a COVID denier than have their posts simply downvoted to -4 and flag-killed.

I'll bite sure.

Covid is not that bad. Statistically unless you are very sick and/or very elderly, you are extremely likely to not die.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73777-8

Deaths were almost entirely in the 60-80+ years old range. When your that old dying is sad, but inevitable.

I'm extremely glad that we don't have an actually dangerous pandemic that effects a wider span of the population.

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

#468
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a quote from Robert Redfield, the director of CDC. > We are not defenseless against COVID-19. Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus -- particularly when used universally within a community setting. All Americans have a responsibility to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. I trust his expertise and judgment. What's the b…

Here in the Netherlands Jaap van Dissel (who holds a similar position to your Robert Redfield) remains unconvinced of the effectiveness of non-medical masks and argues they may do more harm than good. But admitting to trusting his expertise and judgement will probably get you downvoted around here.

Correct. Discussion is useless, when people can just express their own opinions or "emotional truths" rather than respecting established facts. Therefore the only sensible alternative is to downvote without discussion, which is inherently futile.

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

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that say the president has no power: This is were the federal government can step up and use its emergency powers to mandate N95 mask production

This is probably the single biggest failure of the outgoing administration. They forced industry to produce tens of thousands of ventilators that proved unnecessary. They should have ensured every American had access to free (or cheap) N95 masks.

To be fair, at the time ventilators were being rationed.

Of course the need for ventilators was predicted well before the rationing was occuring, so if the administration had acted sooner rationing may have been avoided.

Instead ventilators were no longer and issue by the time they were being produced.

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

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually the state governments that's at fault here. Not the specifically the people. Let me tell you I was in back-country Oregon recently, some of the MOST republican places within Oregon, not going to name drop the county. Anyway, the Oregon state government is very much democratic (cause you know Portland). But because of that, even the republican counties are under a mask order. And the extremely red counti…

The states aren't run by stupid people. They're not gonna send in some state cops start shooting people over masks or to escalate in that direction. They don't have the manpower to enforce mask mandates without the consent of the governed. Their options for projecting power into areas where people have relatively homogeneously chosen to not comply are limited.

Do you think mask mandates are working in the other states due to enforcement? They aren't. People are just wearing them because they accept the seriousness and have a sense of the risk and their responsibility.

Some do it out of shame, others necessity (e.g. shop not letting you in without a mask) but nobody is afraid of being arrested for failing to wear a mask.

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