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I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

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Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#151

Post by pas »

gizmo wrote: post #136
J-dawg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - this kind of misinformation is so widespread now. It seems completely counter productive. The other bit of widespread misinformation is the 2m/6ft distancing thing. It's just an arbitrary number. Weirdly the fearmongering makes me feel like being less careful, not more. The way I see it, if COVID is really so contagious that I'm likely to catch it from a stranger's exhaled breath as I pass them in the stree…

Tiny exposure to covid (by passing somebody on the street) is exceptionally unlikely to make you sick, but it will help your immune system recognize the enemy. This builds partial immunity and if you get exposed for real at some later point your immune system will be able to kick into gear right away.

Has this been demonstrated? Is this true? Is this really how the immune system works?

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#152

Post by pedrocr »

thedrbrian wrote: post #112

> I haven’t hugged my family in over two months — anything to keep them from contracting a virus that could kill them. It could but they look fairly young and as long as they’ve no comorbidities they’ll be fine.

There's some evidence that exposure to higher concentrations of the virus can make things much worse. That matches with lots of reports of deaths of otherwise healthy health workers.

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#153

Post by pedrocr »

dannyw wrote: post #119
thedrbrian wrote: post #112

> I haven’t hugged my family in over two months — anything to keep them from contracting a virus that could kill them. It could but they look fairly young and as long as they’ve no comorbidities they’ll be fine.

It’s incredibly true. We know coronavirus is only really dangerous to the elderly and those with weakened immunity systems. So why aren’t we focusing all the attention and effort on protecting the most vulnerable, instead of spreading misinformation like “COVID doesn’t discriminate” (it does) and panicking over schools while sending confirmed positive patients back to nursing homes?

Coronavirus has a mortality curve by age that looks like the average curve for the population of all other causes. So you're basically saying we shouldn't protect young people of a risk that doubles their chances of dying this year. Should we also get rid of seat belt and helmet laws while we're at it? The total risk there is lower than this.

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#154

Post by ThomPete »

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #67
40four wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more complicated than that. Almost all states very early on had some level of 'lock-down', stay at home order, or what have you. This has limited movement of people, and as a side effect, or maybe even direct order from governors, closed down/ limited many business. Including hospitals. Hospitals in America, believe it nor not, are for profit businesses. It is un-intuitive, but many of them are in serio…

Everything you wrote is weird and simply shows that you need a proper health care system over there.

Americas healthcare system has it's flaws but the benefits amongst others is that it keeps being able to afford to invest in new research and methods and to specialize. It's the advantage of being a profit center.

This is much harder in universal healthcare systems that are cost centers and thus can't just decide to change to a newer better method. Furthermore, the universal healthcare system have to budget who gets what kind of medicine. So while all people gets treated the same way not all illnesses does.

Everything have pros and cons. The US system is much better in some ways and have shortfalls in others and vice versa.

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#155

Post by pas »

el_nahual wrote: post #30
wahern wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact they're worn around so freely should be a hint that they merely look like surgical scrubs, not intended to be used like surgical scrubs. Realistically, I would think scrubs are common because 1) they've become emblematic of healthcare occupations[1] and 2) they're easier to clean and relatively cheap--they protect the wearer from spills and contamination, not the other way around, and in contrast to traditio…

Yes, I know surgeons actually change into sterile scrubs before going into surgery, but even "normal" parts of hospitals are biologically filthy. Even the possibility of bringing MRSA into the outside world should merit a change of clothes.

How long MRSA survives outside a host? Does it survive better on regularly cleaned surfaces where there are not much regular bacteria?

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#156

Post by pjc50 »

jariel wrote: post #94
40four wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more complicated than that. Almost all states very early on had some level of 'lock-down', stay at home order, or what have you. This has limited movement of people, and as a side effect, or maybe even direct order from governors, closed down/ limited many business. Including hospitals. Hospitals in America, believe it nor not, are for profit businesses. It is un-intuitive, but many of them are in serio…

"I know this is doesn't make sense at the surface level," No it makes perfect sense, and it doesn't matter if it's 'nonprofit or for-profit' - the inefficient use of resources is just the same. Hospitals are the most expensive places in the world to run, with very highly trained personnel, gear, etc.. In a socialized system, if they are not used, it's a massive inefficiency. Now imagine a system where 10's of million…

In a centralised system in an emergency, there shouldn't be idle capacity!

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#157

Post by redis_mlc »

pedrocr wrote: post #147
redis_mlc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you watch the videos from the Seattle hospital involved with the first corona patient. They emphasize that each test is expensive, involving PPE for the collector, the lab assistants, reagents and machine time. Then there's the question of accuracy and retesting to verify a positive result ...

At this point in Europe we have private accredited labs doing tests for under 100€ on-site whenever there's an outbreak. Testing the entire US population once would cost ~30B$. Do it three times and spend 100B$ which would be incredible overtesting, and yet well below the other measures your congress has already passed in terms of cost.

Not enough labs, corona is too contagious to test only 3 or 4 times.

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#158

Post by adrianN »

mkagenius wrote: post #66
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO recently changed its guidance to recommend masks for all, albeit only in "specific situations" where distancing is not possible. WHO has updated its guidance to advise that to prevent COVID-19 transmission effectively in areas of community transmission, governments should encourage the general public to wear masks in specific situations and settings as part of a comprehensive approach to suppress SARS-CoV-2 t…

Lets just say every one is just as clueless about this virus as WHO or CDC or Fauci or whoever. Its just a failure of our not so advanced research in this field that we are in this situation. I can't believe everyone is just so clueless.

You are blatantly wrong. There are of course many things we don't understand about the new virus yet, but of course the experts on infectious diseases know a lot more than the average person. Why is is such a common trope to discredit whole fields of research just because they can't provide all the answers, or gasp revise their answers as more data comes in?

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#159

Post by gizmo »

pas wrote: post #151
gizmo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiny exposure to covid (by passing somebody on the street) is exceptionally unlikely to make you sick, but it will help your immune system recognize the enemy. This builds partial immunity and if you get exposed for real at some later point your immune system will be able to kick into gear right away.

Has this been demonstrated? Is this true? Is this really how the immune system works?

Yes, for instance in this 2015 study on influenza: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4342672/

Higher initial dose results in worse outcomes. Low dose still helps build immunity. Covid19 should be assumed to work like other RTIs.

(This is also why obsessively washing your hands and cleaning your house with bleach isn't a good idea, because being in too sterile an environment harms your immune system.)

Re: I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC

#160

Post by afiori »

beachy wrote: post #114
afiori wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US - the country that went to the moon, that invented the internet, that built a military capability that literally saved the world in ww2 two of those are in part result of propaganda

I've read a fair bit of military history, and I'm fairly confident the moon landings were not done using a green screen, so please elaborate on which 2 of these are not true.

I said partly. Regarding the internet the US had a central role in developing and implementing the technology and infrastructure, as is testified by the fact that our current domain system is still US-centric, but in a sense they did not invent it.

Regarding defeating the axis and specifically Germany (Italy was not a military colossus) there is data that shows that the USSR had a bigger impact in defeating the nazis.

No one denies the contributions of the US in both of those feats, but also it is undeniable that the narrative isn't always factually true.

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