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Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

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Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My wife is, after 3 weeks, still really ill. Probably because she's working full time In my opinion it’s high time to call in sick. She is neither helping herself nor her coworkers by going to work.

If that's an option. I lot of people cannot call in sick. Being sick means being unpaid, and many people cannot afford to go unpaid.

That’s just a sad consequence of the paltry state of labor regulation in the US.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#162
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detecting small numbers of COVID-19 cases against the larger background of flu and other respiratory illnesses is not easy. It's quite likely to go undetected clinically until there is a fairly large number of unexplained pneumonia deaths of related people in a specific location. By this time there has been a lot of local exposure and spread. "Problems with CDC coronavirus test delay expanded U.S. screening" - https:…

Yes, a small number of cases could go unnoticed. But you were talking about large clusters. Say 100 people are infected and 15 turn up at hospital with difficulty breathing. For at least one of them, a doctor is going to take a history and notice the characteristic progression (this disease is the most famous disease in the world right now), then report it to their health authority. The large % of cases that require…

Yes, at that point several large clusters will appear within days because of how fast it spreads.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#163
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not…

So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right? Making everyone else pay for you is no better of a solution, it's just shifting the costs around someplace else, which honestly is selfish of you to decide how I should deploy my ever-dwindling supply of cash reserves. I have two kids to put through college but Bernie and all his Democrat pals want to confiscat…

Healthcare is not socialized in China, the best facilities are private, and the public ones are still paying (usually requiring proof that they will be able to pay before admitting patients). Quite often, they provide different levels of healthcare depending on how much the patient pays.

It's easy to think that China is run as a socialist country because there's "communist" in the name of the ruling party, but the truth is very far from that; in many aspects China is a ruthless capitalistic free-for-all society with less socialist policies than even the US.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#164
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a slightly mangled quote - I think he's saying that no-one outside of the ministry has access to the Coronavirus mortality figures, so the lawmaker is presumably pulling the figures out of his butt.

The immediate sentence following gp’s out of context quote: > adding that lawmakers have no access to coronavirus statics and could be mixing figures on deaths related to other diseases like the flu with the new virus, which first emerged in China in December. So, not necessarily out of his butt, could be mixed up. In any case, 12 dead out of 61 (a quickly rising figure) is already terrible.

They almost certainly have more than 61 cases, if 12 are already dead. I'd say hundreds, if the only people who were on track to die did die already.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#165
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not…

So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right? Making everyone else pay for you is no better of a solution, it's just shifting the costs around someplace else, which honestly is selfish of you to decide how I should deploy my ever-dwindling supply of cash reserves. I have two kids to put through college but Bernie and all his Democrat pals want to confiscat…

Hospitals are not free in China

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#166
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not…

So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right? Making everyone else pay for you is no better of a solution, it's just shifting the costs around someplace else, which honestly is selfish of you to decide how I should deploy my ever-dwindling supply of cash reserves. I have two kids to put through college but Bernie and all his Democrat pals want to confiscat…

> confiscate as much of my money as possible to pay for someone else's stuff

_You_ get healthcare as well. It's not just "someone else", it's you, your family, your friends, and everyone you care about. No one should go into a spiraling life of debt because they broke an arm or got sick at an inopportune time.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#167
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not…

So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right? Making everyone else pay for you is no better of a solution, it's just shifting the costs around someplace else, which honestly is selfish of you to decide how I should deploy my ever-dwindling supply of cash reserves. I have two kids to put through college but Bernie and all his Democrat pals want to confiscat…

> So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right?

China has until recently had a less socialized healthcare system than the US. They've made massive strides towards trying to provide a universal system over the last few years, but they are still a developing country, so I'm not sure why you think comparing with China is a good idea, other than, I guess a knee jerk (and incorrect) assumption that it'd all be government run...

Meanwhile socialized healthcare systems are working out fantastically well for large parts of the developed world, but really the most important factor is universal healthcare - universal systems range from fully private multi-payer systems with some system for subsidizing those who can't pay, to fully socialized single payer systems.

What the vast majority of them have in common is that they result in far lower total healthcare spending than in the US thanks to actually regulating healthcare with the public in mind rather than insurers and healthcare providers. In fact, a large number of countries spend less total on healthcare per capita than US taxpayers pay towards Medicare and Medicaid alone, before you even factor in US private insurance.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#168
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but stressing the importance of avoiding "hysteria and panic" is also extremely popular with authoritarian regimes justifying censorship and trying to cover up their own incompetence. There was a window of opportunity during which this virus could have been contained. The Chinese dictatorship has squandered it in the name of "avoiding panic and hysteria". Panic and hysteria should be avoided by being transpare…

[flagged]

I would suggest that being in favour of open borders for some purposes whilst closing borders in completely different circumstances for completely different reasons should be permissible even in our very polarised political climate.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is my understand that it is highly unlikely an uninsured person would ever pay anything close to the billed "price." Same is true for insurance companies. Edit: Some are telling me this isn't true, but what does a hospital have to gain from someone filing bankruptcy? Why would they charge such high prices that no one can afford? I would think that some money is better than no money.

Unfortunately that isn’t much of a factor in reality, and I have the receipts in my filing cabinet to prove it. Insurance/“cash” can “negotiate” but at the end of the day the average hospital stay is near $4000/day.

Good God. I had a small surgery in Germany about 10 years ago that is usually outpatient, but I passed out afterwards, so the doctor had me admitted for overnight observation. Total bill for surgery, lab and the stay in a room with another American lady who was on bedrest with triplets (!!!): 1400 EUR, which my American insurer paid with absolutely no arguments. This was the full retail, premium “private patient” rate - most Germans wouldn’t have even seen a bill that size.

A friend in the US had the same procedure outpatient, and it was $6000, $1200 of which she was responsible for. On the upside, they gave her 30 Vicodin for the post-op pain and no follow-up about said opioids, where I only got a week's worth of Tramadol (much less potent) and a follow-up with my regular doc who wanted to know at what rate I was taking them. My friend was slightly tempted to sell her leftovers...

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#170
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fifth death has just been confirmed, sadly. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-italy-death/...

and now its six https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/feb/24/coronavir...

and now its seven

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/feb/24/coronavir...

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