At what point would you lock down again?

[mommyoffive]

Delta variant outbreak threatens Singapore's 'living with Covid' model (msn.com)

 

Schools opening after Labor Day could see fresh burst of coronavirus cases -- if mitigation measures aren't followed (msn.com)

 

UK Covid news LIVE: Expect a ‘difficult few weeks’ as cases tick up, says Prof Neil Ferguson (msn.com)

 

Opinions | Why vaccine skeptics are all in on ivermectin (msn.com)

 

Two school districts, and two radically different approaches to managing the pandemic (msn.com)

 

 

 

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

1 hour ago, mommyoffive said:

Delta variant outbreak threatens Singapore's 'living with Covid' model (msn.com)

 

Schools opening after Labor Day could see fresh burst of coronavirus cases -- if mitigation measures aren't followed (msn.com)

 

UK Covid news LIVE: Expect a ‘difficult few weeks’ as cases tick up, says Prof Neil Ferguson (msn.com)

 

Opinions | Why vaccine skeptics are all in on ivermectin (msn.com)

 

Two school districts, and two radically different approaches to managing the pandemic (msn.com)

 

 

 

 

Good opinion piece on Ivermectin, in my opinion. 

[pinball]

11 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

US coronavirus: How to protect children under 12 from Covid-19, according to Fauci (msn.com)

 

Judge denies woman’s request to force hospital to use ivermectin on her COVID-infected husband (msn.com)

Second article is horrible…hospitals and doctors on a power trip.

if someone is in desperate shape and the hospital won’t prescribe or won’t extend privileges, it is no longer about patient care. It’s about power and maintaining status quo.

disgusting

 

[wathe]

18 minutes ago, pinball said:

Second article is horrible…hospitals and doctors on a power trip.

if someone is in desperate shape and the hospital won’t prescribe or won’t extend privileges, it is no longer about patient care. It’s about power and maintaining status quo.

disgusting

 

So you think that physicians and hospitals should be compelled to prescribe and administer therapies with no proven benefit, known proven harm, that have been advised against by CDC. FDA, and all other reputable professional organizations, that do not conform to standard of care,  only because a patient or family demands it?  

That's a massive Pandora's box for all kinds of quackery.  

It would make medical ethical practice impossible.  

[Corraleno]

9 minutes ago, pinball said:

Second article is horrible…hospitals and doctors on a power trip.

if someone is in desperate shape and the hospital won’t prescribe or won’t extend privileges, it is no longer about patient care. It’s about power and maintaining status quo.

disgusting

 

The hospital chief of staff said that physicians who are not board certified cannot be admitted to practice at West Chester per hospital policy. Wagshul is not board certified and has not practiced in any hospital in 10 years, per his own testimony. Wagshul also admitted that he had never examined the patient or reviewed his records before writing the prescription, and when the judge asked him if the patient had improved with ivermectin, Wagshul literally said "I don't know," since he has never even seen the patient.

Refusing to use an unproven treatment prescribed by a doctor who has never met let alone examined the patient IS about patient care. 

[pinball]

4 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

The hospital chief of staff said that physicians who are not board certified cannot be admitted to practice at West Chester per hospital policy. Wagshul is not board certified and has not practiced in any hospital in 10 years, per his own testimony. Wagshul also admitted that he had never examined the patient or reviewed his records before writing the prescription, and when the judge asked him if the patient had improved with ivermectin, Wagshul literally said "I don't know," since he has never even seen the patient.

Refusing to use an unproven treatment prescribed by a doctor who has never met let alone examined the patient IS about patient care. 

No, actually, the doctor said this:

But at last week’s court hearing, Waghsul was only able to say that the patient “seems to be” getting better after receiving the drug and said, “I honestly don’t know,” when asked if continued use of ivermectin would benefit him, Judge Oster said in his ruling.

[mommyoffive]

An exhausted Iowa ER doctor pleaded with people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in a Facebook Live video: 'We are drowning in people who are dying with this illness' (msn.com)

 

Editorial: Your ‘personal choice’ not to get COVID vaccine is putting our ‘health care heroes’ at risk (msn.com)

 

 

[SKL]

5 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

The hospital chief of staff said that physicians who are not board certified cannot be admitted to practice at West Chester per hospital policy. Wagshul is not board certified and has not practiced in any hospital in 10 years, per his own testimony. Wagshul also admitted that he had never examined the patient or reviewed his records before writing the prescription, and when the judge asked him if the patient had improved with ivermectin, Wagshul literally said "I don't know," since he has never even seen the patient.

Refusing to use an unproven treatment prescribed by a doctor who has never met let alone examined the patient IS about patient care. 

If these are the facts, then one wonders why this even made the news in the first place.  Guess we gave up on journalistic ethics long ago.

[Corraleno]

12 minutes ago, SKL said:

If these are the facts, then one wonders why this even made the news in the first place.  Guess we gave up on journalistic ethics long ago.

It made news because the first judge who heard the case ordered the hospital to administer the drug over the objections of the treating doctors. The idea that a judge with no medical background could force a hospital to administer an unproven drug that the FDA warns against, that was prescribed by a doctor who never met the patient, was certainly newsworthy given the frightening and potentially long-reaching implications. Thankfully this second judge overruled the first, although apparently the patient was given some of the prescribed ivermectin while the appeal was pending. 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Corraleno

[wathe]

8 minutes ago, SKL said:

If these are the facts, then one wonders why this even made the news in the first place.  Guess we gave up on journalistic ethics long ago.

A judge ordered that the hospital administer the drug despite these facts.  That's absolutely newsworthy.

[mommyoffive]

4 vaccinated front-line workers cope with pandemic's toll (msn.com)

 

WHO says Covid will mutate like the flu and is likely here to stay (msn.com)

 

Texas ER doctor: 'COVID is kicking humanity's a--' (msn.com)

[KSera]

22 hours ago, Shoes+Ships+SealingWax said:

He is. We made our only recreational trip in 18mo a couple of weeks ago. We are both vaccinated, but DS is too young. We masked while traveling, masked at the event we attended, & all attendees were required to be vaccinated or have a negative test. Had a great time. Then he stayed behind to finish his trip (he’s a pilot). 

He returned a few days later, & a couple of days after that we both started not feeling well - though with different symptoms. We cancelled DS’ extracurriculars, got tested, & received one + result (him), one - result (me).  

He hasn’t been terribly ill, but has been symptomatic (fatigue, loss of smell, lots of coughing). I bounced back almost immediately from whatever had me not feeling great & retested yesterday to confirm my previous negative. We’re thinking, given the circumstances, that he must have picked it up at work after we came home. He may even have picked up multiple things & passed something to me… just not Covid. Thankfully.

Did your ds ever get tested? So far, each of cases of breakthrough I've known have started in an unvaccinated kid and then moved to their parents, and I’ve been interested in how often that is the case (as a parent of a couple kids too young to be vaccinated). Certainly I’m sure there are plenty of cases that don’t follow that pattern, but it seems common. 

20 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

It's only only going to run out of fuel when every single person has antibodies. And then it'll become endemic but much slower burning is my guess. 

If that’s going to be the case, we better hope we come up with good treatments and/or preventions for long Covid, otherwise that will be a devastating number of people affected with it. Enough to have a long term impact on society. 

[busymama7]

7 minutes ago, KSera said:

If that’s going to be the case, we better hope we come up with good treatments and/or preventions for long Covid, otherwise that will be a devastating number of people affected with it. Enough to have a long term impact on society. 

I don't know how this work either because antibodies don't last forever and people can get it more than once.  

[lewelma]

On 9/7/2021 at 3:26 AM, Corraleno said:

Does anyone know what the explanation is for the weirdness in the UK graph? There was a steep 6-week climb followed by a precipitous 2-week drop, and now it's been climbing back up for the last 4 weeks. Was there a sharp shutdown and then release? Data backlog? 

As a population dynamics modeller in my past life, I can tell you that the modelling of this situation is incredibly complex, and I am not even sure that the math has been created to deal with it.  The problem is that the data is a time series, so there is a time delay on all causes.  But the bigger problem is the patchiness in time and space in how the virus spreads. Patchy in time because people's behaviour changes based on weather, advice, personal risk decisions, and patch in space due to both the rural/urban divide, and even more serious from the point of view of the modeller is the patchiness of human interaction, where the virus can spread through your friend group quite quickly, but then stall because your friend group has limited interaction with other groups. This is overlaid with the immigration/emmigration of the virus between groups in space and time. And of course the data *collected* does not have enough sensitivity of all these variables to actually represent the true situation. Huge numbers of cases are not documented, and the patchiness in space and time would vary depending on both the macro and micro culture of your geographical area and your social group.  Basically, it is unmodel-able. Which is why you see models/explanations that are crap, because that is the best they can do.  

Edited September 7, 2021 by lewelma

[Not_a_Number]

57 minutes ago, busymama7 said:

I don't know how this work either because antibodies don't last forever and people can get it more than once.  

There are always the memory cells 🤷‍♀️. Natural immunity looks to be highly effective at least for some time, anyway.

 

1 hour ago, KSera said:

Did your ds ever get tested? So far, each of cases of breakthrough I've known have started in an unvaccinated kid and then moved to their parents, and I’ve been interested in how often that is the case (as a parent of a couple kids too young to be vaccinated). Certainly I’m sure there are plenty of cases that don’t follow that pattern, but it seems common. 

If that’s going to be the case, we better hope we come up with good treatments and/or preventions for long Covid, otherwise that will be a devastating number of people affected with it. Enough to have a long term impact on society. 

What can I say? The world is a cruel place. I don’t LIKE this outcome. I just call ‘em as I see ‘em.

[cintinative]

5 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

An exhausted Iowa ER doctor pleaded with people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in a Facebook Live video: 'We are drowning in people who are dying with this illness' (msn.com)

 

 

JAWM: 

So my husband thinks this guy is making it up because my dh can't find data to support the ICU is full claim. This led to a whole discussion where he was saying that basically no news media is trustworthy, hospitals are not trustworthy, etc.  I wondered aloud where we were supposed to get information and he suggested there must be some middle ground. If you all find the the unicorn middle ground to which he is referring, let me know. 

I guess we're all doomed because no one will ever trust the media, or govt, or hospitals, or even individual FB pages. What's left?  Sigh. 

[LinRTX]

3 minutes ago, cintinative said:

This led to a whole discussion where he was saying that basically no news media is trustworthy, hospitals are not trustworthy, etc.

Will he trust personal experience? My daughter is a nurse in Alabama -- small hospital, but they are treating patients in the hallways because they are out of room. (I am not certain about ICU). My brother went to a funeral today -- his daughter-in-laws father. Another small hospital. He died because he needed dialysis and was on a vent. The hospital does not do dialysis and could not find a place to transfer him in time. All of this is covid related.

[cintinative]

2 minutes ago, LinRTX said:

Will he trust personal experience? My daughter is a nurse in Alabama -- small hospital, but they are treating patients in the hallways because they are out of room. (I am not certain about ICU). My brother went to a funeral today -- his daughter-in-laws father. Another small hospital. He died because he needed dialysis and was on a vent. The hospital does not do dialysis and could not find a place to transfer him in time. All of this is covid related.

I am so sorry to hear this. I pray daily for the nurses and health care workers. 

If he doesn't trust the ER doctor on FB, I would say he's not going to trust personal stories that can't be confirmed by him.  I just shake my head.  Somehow it was supposed to be obvious to me who we should vote for last election. So someone is telling the truth apparently. Shrug.

 

[Faith-manor]

15 minutes ago, cintinative said:

JAWM: 

So my husband thinks this guy is making it up because my dh can't find data to support the ICU is full claim. This led to a whole discussion where he was saying that basically no news media is trustworthy, hospitals are not trustworthy, etc.  I wondered aloud where we were supposed to get information and he suggested there must be some middle ground. If you all find the the unicorn middle ground to which he is referring, let me know. 

I guess we're all doomed because no one will ever trust the media, or govt, or hospitals, or even individual FB pages. What's left?  Sigh. 

I am so sorry about this. It has to hurt so much, and make you very worried on top of frustrated!

 

[Spryte]

27 minutes ago, cintinative said:

I am so sorry to hear this. I pray daily for the nurses and health care workers. 

If he doesn't trust the ER doctor on FB, I would say he's not going to trust personal stories that can't be confirmed by him.  I just shake my head.  Somehow it was supposed to be obvious to me who we should vote for last election. So someone is telling the truth apparently. Shrug.

 

I’m so sorry.

I know you said he probably won’t trust personal experiences, but he’s welcome to read my long thread on my mom. I don’t know if I put all the details there, or scattered them about in other threads, but basically the hospital overwhelm here created the mess in which we waited for hours and hours and she was finally seen quickly and discharged, lifted into our car unable to walk and sent home with an undiagnosed broken pelvis at 80 yrs old. When we arrived home, we put her feet on the driveway and tried to help her walk. She’s unable to lift either foot, so ambulance again to a different hospital. She is going to be in skilled nursing care for a long time now.

That first hospital announced the next day that they would allow no more visitors due to overwhelm. Living that scenario made it tragically real for me. And we were lucky ones, really.

But maybe it won’t matter to him, because I’m not a personal acquaintance. I sure hope he doesn’t need to find out the way we did. It’s awful. 

I don’t know what he means by middle ground. Someplace between what and what else, I wonder? (No need to try to answer, just musing.)

I’m just sorry. This is soooo hard.

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

There is no middle ground on truth.  There might be some allowable range on the interpretation of truth (what the causes might be, what the response should be etc.) , but the basic facts are basic facts. 

[Wheres Toto]

Do you have a hospital close enough that you may know people who work there or have been there themselves?  Maybe putting out a call on Facebook for acquaintances who have personal experience, so it's someone he actually knows?   

I'd suggest visiting a hospital but I'm sure they don't need that right now, if they would even allow it. 

[Spryte]

12 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

There is no middle ground on truth.  There might be some allowable range on the interpretation of truth (what the causes might be, what the response should be etc.) , but the basic facts are basic facts. 

Agreed. Some people don’t want facts unless they fit their narrative.

Asking for a middle ground is like asking for a sugar-coated place between reality and fantasy. It doesn’t exist.

I do wonder if it’s possible to get through to some people, if we figure out how they need to learn the facts, their “middle ground.” Possibly not.

 

[Kassia]

1 hour ago, cintinative said:

JAWM: 

So my husband thinks this guy is making it up because my dh can't find data to support the ICU is full claim. This led to a whole discussion where he was saying that basically no news media is trustworthy, hospitals are not trustworthy, etc.  I wondered aloud where we were supposed to get information and he suggested there must be some middle ground. If you all find the the unicorn middle ground to which he is referring, let me know. 

I guess we're all doomed because no one will ever trust the media, or govt, or hospitals, or even individual FB pages. What's left?  Sigh. 

That is really hard.  The people in our county are like this and it's maddening but I can't imagine having to deal with a spouse who feels this way.  I'm sorry.

[pinball]

That Iowa doctor works in a hospital with only 27 staffed beds. (American Hospital Directory)

The way he is talking…he has to send ALL or ANY patient who needs critical care to another hospital.

This article says there are 297 ICU beds available in Iowa, as of 3 Sept.

The health department reports 143 patients in intensive care, up from 133 the previous week. There are 66 patients on ventilators, up from 51 a week ago. 

IDPH reports approximately 2,260 inpatient beds available in the state, with 297 ICU beds 

https://www.kcci.com/article/iowa-covid-hospitalizations-sept-2/37463011#

 

 

[cintinative]

2 minutes ago, pinball said:

That Iowa doctor works in a hospital with only 27 staffed beds. (American Hospital Directory)

The way he is talking…he has to send ALL or ANY patient who needs critical care to another hospital.

This article says there are 297 ICU beds available in Iowa, as of 3 Sept.

The health department reports 143 patients in intensive care, up from 133 the previous week. There are 66 patients on ventilators, up from 51 a week ago. 

IDPH reports approximately 2,260 inpatient beds available in the state, with 297 ICU beds 

https://www.kcci.com/article/iowa-covid-hospitalizations-sept-2/37463011#

 

 

So, I might be dense, but are you saying that there is no ICU at that hospital because when I looked up the county online (Iowa Coronavirus site) it did not have any data for their ICU.  Thanks for clarifying.

As an aside, one thing I have noticed that people (including my dh) do is to list out how many beds are available but I am not totally clear on if that stat means "staffed" beds or not. Does anyone know?

[cintinative]

21 minutes ago, Wheres Toto said:

Do you have a hospital close enough that you may know people who work there or have been there themselves?  Maybe putting out a call on Facebook for acquaintances who have personal experience, so it's someone he actually knows?   

I have nurse friends but none of them work in the ICU/ER. Actually, my cousin's daughter did for about a year, and recently quit, because she was overwhelmed. She was a recent grad and they were slammed with patients. She had 12 hour shifts where she never got to eat or go pee.  I did tell him about her.  

I think part of the problem is when you see numbers as numbers only and not representative of people, families, parts of families, then you can become numb to the stories behind those numbers. Or you think, like my husband, that "most people recover" and don't acknowledge that recovery for some is a lifetime of disability and horrible medical debt. 

[busymama7]

2 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

There are always the memory cells 🤷‍♀️. Natural immunity looks to be highly effective at least for some time, anyway.

For a time is the key though.  That really was never in question.

Im just feeling annoyed because I took both shots to try to prevent me getting it again. And the second one made me worse off than I was.  I am hoping it wasn't in vain.   I really didn't believe that it was a one and done disease. And if it isn't then reaching herd immunity is not possible, right? It just just takes turns who it infects.  

[kbutton]

7 hours ago, wathe said:

So you think that physicians and hospitals should be compelled to prescribe and administer therapies with no proven benefit, known proven harm, that have been advised against by CDC. FDA, and all other reputable professional organizations, that do not conform to standard of care,  only because a patient or family demands it?  

That's a massive Pandora's box for all kinds of quackery.  

It would make medical ethical practice impossible.  

Not to mention putting clinicians at risk of serious lawsuits.

7 hours ago, Corraleno said:

The hospital chief of staff said that physicians who are not board certified cannot be admitted to practice at West Chester per hospital policy. Wagshul is not board certified and has not practiced in any hospital in 10 years, per his own testimony. 

Thanks! I was trying to figure out if he had admitting privileges at any hospitals in SW Ohio, and I wasn't having any luck. I liked that the judge said that the man could be safely transferred into Waghsul's care wherever he had privileges--that seems to be a reasonable place to draw the legal line.

1 hour ago, cintinative said:

I guess we're all doomed because no one will ever trust the media, or govt, or hospitals, or even individual FB pages. What's left?  Sigh. 

I am working through the book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch after hearing the author interviewed on either The Dispatch Podcast or Advisory Opinions. He discusses this erosion of trust in authorities, etc. The book is really good so far.

43 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

There is no middle ground on truth.  There might be some allowable range on the interpretation of truth (what the causes might be, what the response should be etc.) , but the basic facts are basic facts. 

QFT   

[Jean in Newcastle]

5 minutes ago, cintinative said:

So, I might be dense, but are you saying that there is no ICU at that hospital because when I looked up the county online (Iowa Coronavirus site) it did not have any data for their ICU.  Thanks for clarifying.

As an aside, one thing I have noticed that people (including my dh) do is to list out how many beds are available but I am not totally clear on if that stat means "staffed" beds or not. Does anyone know?

Lots of small hospitals don't have any ICU beds or might have only one or two (the article doesn't say if this hospital does or not).  But these small hospitals have to transfer patients to where there are available open ICU beds if their beds are full or if they don't have any, if an ICU bed is needed.  I have seen news footage of hospital personnel calling one hospital after another looking for available beds.  And by available beds, I do mean beds that also have staff to monitor them.  So if a hospital is short-staffed any given day, they might not be able to put people in the ICU even if they technically have the beds. 

[kbutton]

1 minute ago, busymama7 said:

For a time is the key though.  That really was never in question.

Im just feeling annoyed because I took both shots to try to prevent me getting it again. And the second one made me worse off than I was.  I am hoping it wasn't in vain.   I really didn't believe that it was a one and done disease. And if it isn't then reaching herd immunity is not possible, right? It just just takes turns who it infects.  

My two cents is that we'll have quite an awkward stage between pandemic and an endemic disease that isn't quite scary, and that stage might last quite a while. Vaccination could shorten it. Let 'er rip might shorten it, but most of us on here agree that it's not an ethical choice with vaccines available and the death toll required to get there. Instead, we're going for some kind of hybrid option because that's how people have chosen to behave. 

I am not sure that we've had vaccines during an actual pandemic other than maybe some of the smaller flu pandemics (like H1N1, but as I understand it, the first season it was circulating, it was novel, so the shot that year didn't contain it. I assume the very next vaccine included some protection, but I don't really know). I know my parents said that there was a big vaccination push during the flu pandemic in 1968, but then it was suddenly over, and a lot of the vaccinations were cancelled. This made them temporarily reticent to vaccinate for Covid as they felt like they'd put up with all the symptoms, and then the pandemic would be gone without it mattering that they got vaccinated.

[SeaConquest]

29 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Lots of small hospitals don't have any ICU beds or might have only one or two (the article doesn't say if this hospital does or not).  But these small hospitals have to transfer patients to where there are available open ICU beds if their beds are full or if they don't have any, if an ICU bed is needed.  I have seen news footage of hospital personnel calling one hospital after another looking for available beds.  And by available beds, I do mean beds that also have staff to monitor them.  So if a hospital is short-staffed any given day, they might not be able to put people in the ICU even if they technically have the beds. 

Many Covid units have had to close because they simply do not have the staff to run them. You cannot take med-surg or OB nurses and float them to an ICU. The skill sets are just completely different and nurses are not going to risk losing their licenses, not to mention putting patient safety at risk. They will simply not take report on the patient or call safe harbor or whatever your nurse practice act allows you to do ethically, but they are not going to take the patient.

Moreover, all ICUs are not created equal. ICUs in some smaller hospitals are often more equipped to deal with what you would see in some step-down units in larger hospitals. For example, small ICUs likely aren't going to have highly specialized equipment like ECMO (which oxygenates blood outside the patient's body, allowing the heart and lungs to rest) or CRRT (a type of dialysis used in hemodynamically unstable patients), nor are they going to have the staff trained to use these machines.  So, where you get sick, and the kinds of treatment you therefore get access to, really matters in these situations. 

Edited September 8, 2021 by SeaConquest

[Not_a_Number]

33 minutes ago, busymama7 said:

For a time is the key though.  That really was never in question.

Im just feeling annoyed because I took both shots to try to prevent me getting it again. And the second one made me worse off than I was.  I am hoping it wasn't in vain.   I really didn't believe that it was a one and done disease. And if it isn't then reaching herd immunity is not possible, right? It just just takes turns who it infects.  

I'm sorry 😞 . How long has it been since the second one? 

[Happy2BaMom]

Cintinative, you could show your husband what's happening in Idaho now....they're having to ration health care due to overly-full hospitals? (source 1, source 2, there's more via google)

I could point to other news sources about other states (where similar things are happening), but it's become obvious to me that people believe what they want to believe, regardless of what the people who actually treat Covid patients have to say about the pandemic. (It's just unfortunate that so many of those same skeptics seem to have no issue running to the doctors & hospitals once they are struggling to breathe....why the health care professionals who can't be trusted at all before, but then are expected to save your life once you're sick, I'll never understand, but that's where we stand......

 

[Frances]

29 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Lots of small hospitals don't have any ICU beds or might have only one or two (the article doesn't say if this hospital does or not).  But these small hospitals have to transfer patients to where there are available open ICU beds if their beds are full or if they don't have any, if an ICU bed is needed.  I have seen news footage of hospital personnel calling one hospital after another looking for available beds.  And by available beds, I do mean beds that also have staff to monitor them.  So if a hospital is short-staffed any given day, they might not be able to put people in the ICU even if they technically have the beds. 

That is definitely happening here. While some of the largest hospitals technically have open ICU beds, several are not accepting transfers because they barely have enough staff to cover their currently full beds. Besides National Guard support and traveling healthcare workers, the local hospital has instituted triple overtime pay and a bonus for referring anyone who gets hired. 

I have no idea how this would be reported on our state Covid dashboard (ICU bed is available, but not the staff for it, so not accepting transfers). But it seems to me that the first hand accounts I hear from hospital staff and local news articles quoting or video interviewing local hospital officials likely give a better picture than state dashboard numbers where the precise data definitions are not known and there might be a time lag or other issues.

I guess I’m also struggling to understand why people think the hospital overwhelm is a lie. What purpose would hospital officials and staff have for lying? What do they stand to gain? I’m not directing this at @cintinative, as she is not responsible for her husband’s beliefs. But others like @SKLhave also insinuated that reports of hospital overwhelm might not be true and political. 

I know two people who used to worked at the Marshalltown, IA hospital in question, including one in the ER. But he’s now in medical school and the other moved.

[busymama7]

39 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I'm sorry 😞 . How long has it been since the second one? 

2 weeks 

[SeaConquest]

1 hour ago, Frances said:

But others like @SKLhave also insinuated that reports of hospital overwhelm might not be true and political. 

Bwahahaha. I am sorry to LOL, but I just can't anymore with the stupid conspiracies.

How exactly is hospitals being overwhelmed and having to bring in ICU travel nurses at $10k+ per week political? I'm dying to hear this one.

Unrelated, but my favorite MD comedian's commentary from today was spot on:

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by SeaConquest

[kbutton]

9 minutes ago, SeaConquest said:

Bwahahaha. I am sorry to LOL, but I just can't anymore with the stupid conspiracies.

How exactly is hospitals being overwhelmed and having to bring in ICU travel nurses at $10k+ per week political? I'm dying to hear this one.

Unrelated, but my favorite MD comedian's commentary from today was spot on:

 

The people around here think they are standing up for healthcare workers who don't want to be vaccinated, and that these healthcare workers will be quitting in droves.

Now, I will say that there are a few conspiracy-minded docs, but most of it is from nurses. The nurses around here are very into the conspiracies, and a good many are simply doubtful about the Covid vaccine for some reason. It's not an insignificant number here.

But truly, people here think they are saving the world by not vaccinating. They think people getting vaccinated are signing their death warrants down the road. I haven't been able to discern the entire gist of the theory (people refer to it like everyone already knows), but it has something to do with the vaccine making it worse later on, and people who get it will be immune compromised somehow later.

[SKL]

1 hour ago, Frances said:

I guess I’m also struggling to understand why people think the hospital overwhelm is a lie. What purpose would hospital officials and staff have for lying? What do they stand to gain? I’m not directing this at @cintinative, as she is not responsible for her husband’s beliefs. But others like @SKLhave also insinuated that reports of hospital overwhelm might not be true and political.

I never said that all the reports were untrue or political.  I know that hospitals in certain areas are being hit very hard; I said that isn't happening everywhere, which is also true.  Additionally, it has been proven that some of the reports in the news were exaggerated or selectively reported (e.g. when the hospital overwhelm was due to RSV not Covid but it was implied to be due to Covid).  The hospitals themselves clarified the facts in those cases.

I was never suggesting that people here were being dishonest about their personal experiences.  My point was that this is not happening everywhere (at least not so far).  I am watching this very very closely for areas where information is available.

A few people misread what I said and responded in ways I didn't feel deserved a response at that time.

[SeaConquest]

6 minutes ago, SKL said:

I never said that all the reports were untrue or political.  I know that hospitals in certain areas are being hit very hard; I said that isn't happening everywhere, which is also true.  Additionally, it has been proven that some of the reports in the news were exaggerated or selectively reported (e.g. when the hospital overwhelm was due to RSV not Covid but it was implied to be due to Covid).  The hospitals themselves clarified the facts in those cases.

I was never suggesting that people here were being dishonest about their personal experiences.  My point was that this is not happening everywhere (at least not so far).  I am watching this very very closely for areas where information is available.

A few people misread what I said and responded in ways I didn't feel deserved a response at that time.

I haven't followed this thread every day, so I don't know what was or wasn't said, but here in San Diego our Covid numbers are certainly up because of Delta, but nothing like what we saw in January and certainly nothing like what they are seeing in many red states. So, our hospitals are not being overrun (knock wood -- we will see what happens come the winter time). We have a 77% vaccination rate (at least one dose) and pretty good levels of masking (not great, but pretty good), but like I said, we will see what happens when our rainy season hits in Dec/Jan and people spend more time indoors and the majority of the population starts to see their immunity wane. We have seen this seasonal pattern in the South before because of their heat/humidity/abundant use of air conditioning, combined with their low rates of masking + low vax rates + nonchalance about the transmissibility of Delta. I will actually be pleasantly surprised if we don't see a big upsurge here come the winter. I just hope people will get their boosters and not give up on the vaccines.

[SoCal_Bear]

1 hour ago, busymama7 said:

2 weeks 

FWIW, I didn't have Covid, but it did take me a good 5-6 weeks to fully recover from shot #2. I have mulitple autoimmune issues.

[Pam in CT]

re hospital overload being unevenly distributed

5 minutes ago, SeaConquest said:

I haven't followed this thread every day, so I don't know what was or wasn't said, but here in San Diego our Covid numbers are certainly up because of Delta, but nothing like what we saw in January and certainly nothing like what they are seeing in many red states. So, our hospitals are not being overrun (knock wood -- we will see what happens come the winter time). We have a 77% vaccination rate (at least one dose) and pretty good levels of masking (not great, but pretty good), but like I said, we will see what happens when our rainy season hits in Dec/Jan and people spend more time indoors and the majority of the population starts to see their immunity wane. We have seen this seasonal pattern in the South before because of their heat/humidity/abundant use of air conditioning, combined with their low rates of masking + low vax rates + nonchalance about the transmissibility of Delta. I will actually be pleasantly surprised if we don't see a big upsurge here come the winter. I just hope people will get their boosters and not give up on the vaccines.

That's roughly where we are in CT as well.  We were a very-early hot spot, and our hospitals were overwhelmed back in April 2020, but we've never (knock wood) approached those levels at any point since:

Schools just opened late last week, and everyone expects cases to balloon because of that; and in a few more weeks the weather will drive folks indoors.  But hopefully high vaccination (we're at 71.1% of the state total population all ages, only VT, MA, CT and WDC have gotten over 70%) and good masking will keep too many cases from hitting the hospitals.

[busymama7]

7 minutes ago, calbear said:

FWIW, I didn't have Covid, but it did take me a good 5-6 weeks to fully recover from shot #2. I have mulitple autoimmune issues.

Interesting.  I guess there is still hope. I don't really have formal autoimmune diagnosis but I have an appointment tomorrow to go over blood work that to me seems to indicate it ☹️. I have a mom and sister with fibromyalgia so there is that too. 

[KSera]

3 hours ago, cintinative said:

I think part of the problem is when you see numbers as numbers only and not representative of people, families, parts of families, then you can become numb to the stories behind those numbers. Or you think, like my husband, that "most people recover" and don't acknowledge that recovery for some is a lifetime of disability and horrible medical debt. 

Do stories of real people make a difference for him? I’m wondering if he’s already read or heard the story of Daniel Wilkinson?

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

But truly, people here think they are saving the world by not vaccinating. They think people getting vaccinated are signing their death warrants down the road. I haven't been able to discern the entire gist of the theory (people refer to it like everyone already knows), but it has something to do with the vaccine making it worse later on, and people who get it will be immune compromised somehow later.

This is so confusing to me. I don’t understand why people would choose to err in the direction of avoiding something hypothetical that has no basis to think it will happen, but that they are scared could happen as opposed to avoiding the thing we absolutely know is happening in large numbers right now, causing lots of short and long term illness and death. 

[Not_a_Number]

2 hours ago, busymama7 said:

2 weeks 

It took me longer than that to totally recover. I hadn't had COVID, but I have lots of weird neurological stuff, and the headache really lingered. 

[SoCal_Bear]

25 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

It took me longer than that to totally recover. I hadn't had COVID, but I have lots of weird neurological stuff, and the headache really lingered. 

Similar for me, but I gladly take that over the odds of long Covid. Given my autoimmune issues, I don't think getting Covid without being vax'd would go well for me. I strongly suspect I already have CFS/PEM. It's just undx'd.

[busymama7]

Ok this is giving me hope that I will at least go back to how I was before the 2 doses.  I would love to be at the level I was the week after the first dose but even before would be better than this.  Did anyone do anything specific for helping heal from the vax that has autoimmune?

[Frances]

2 hours ago, SKL said:

I never said that all the reports were untrue or political.  I know that hospitals in certain areas are being hit very hard; I said that isn't happening everywhere, which is also true.  Additionally, it has been proven that some of the reports in the news were exaggerated or selectively reported (e.g. when the hospital overwhelm was due to RSV not Covid but it was implied to be due to Covid).  The hospitals themselves clarified the facts in those cases.

I was never suggesting that people here were being dishonest about their personal experiences.  My point was that this is not happening everywhere (at least not so far).  I am watching this very very closely for areas where information is available.

A few people misread what I said and responded in ways I didn't feel deserved a response at that time.

Did anyone claim it was happening everywhere? I didn’t say you said that all reports were untrue or political, but you certainly implied some of them were. And I ask you, what do hospital leaders and workers have to gain politically or otherwise by lying or exaggerating?

The leader of the local hospital here has been clear that it is a combination of covid (primarily among the unvaccinated) and people who delayed treatments during the pandemic overwhelming the hospitals. It’s not surprising that some hospital leaders, spokespeople, or workers might primarily stress unvaccinated covid patients when talking about overwhelm because it has by far the simplest solution and from many reports, they are the hardest cases emotionally for workers to deal with. That doesn’t mean people are always lying by not mentioning other reasons for overwhelm such as burnt out workers quitting or people delaying healthcare during the pandemic, etc.

I’m curious what you mean when you say you are watching it very, very closely for areas where information is available? Do you mean everywhere in the US? Or areas where you have friends and family members due to concern for them? Or something else? 
 

I feel very well informed about the hospital situation in my local area and state as I assume you would be about your area given your stated interest. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

Btw - nursing shortages are not a new thing and it's been predicted for a long time that it would get worse as aging boomers put a strain on the medical system.  But - that doesn't take away from the fact that this particular pandemic is contributing to the overwhelm. And specifically the overwhelm when it comes to ICU beds and the equipment required to treat moderate to severe Covid. 

Also the idea that overwhelmed doctors would not want to use all available legitimate treatments is absurd as well as offensive. 

[TCB]

14 hours ago, cintinative said:

JAWM: 

So my husband thinks this guy is making it up because my dh can't find data to support the ICU is full claim. This led to a whole discussion where he was saying that basically no news media is trustworthy, hospitals are not trustworthy, etc.  I wondered aloud where we were supposed to get information and he suggested there must be some middle ground. If you all find the the unicorn middle ground to which he is referring, let me know. 

I guess we're all doomed because no one will ever trust the media, or govt, or hospitals, or even individual FB pages. What's left?  Sigh. 

Why else is he saying hospitals aren’t trustworthy? Because of that dr? What do hospitals have to gain from lying?

In my experience hospitals say very little about what is going on because of the whole privacy issue. 
 

ETA Sorry I noticed the JAWM after I posted so feel free to ignore.

Edited September 8, 2021 by TCB