Medical Discussion of Coronavirus

[FIREshrink]

We have an extremely bipolar virus that is largely benign in the younger, healthy population and is malignant in the older and frail population - there must be a way to exploit this characteristic.

Possibly, but this declaration isn't it. It doesn't differentiate between low and high risk workers or settings; it argues to open up schools (despite teacher risks), universities (despite professor and staff risks), sporting events (despite coaching staff and venue staff risks), and so forth. A majority of teachers and health care workers and nursing home workers have at least one risk factor if not several (age and obesity being the most common). Have you looked at your hospital CNAs and nursing staff , kitchen staff and housekeeping? Obesity is rampant among lower to middle income Americans. What percentage of doctors are over 50? Over 60? The guy selling me hot dogs at the ballpark is no spring chicken, he smokes, he's overweight. What happens to him?

I think these authors and people like them don't work in The real world with real Americans.

[fatlittlepig]

Possibly, but this declaration isn't it. It doesn't differentiate between low and high risk workers or settings; it argues to open up schools (despite teacher risks), universities (despite professor and staff risks), sporting events (despite coaching staff and venue staff risks), and so forth. A majority of teachers and health care workers and nursing home workers have at least one risk factor if not several (age and obesity being the most common). Have you looked at your hospital CNAs and nursing staff , kitchen staff and housekeeping? Obesity is rampant among lower to middle income Americans. What percentage of doctors are over 50? Over 60? The guy selling me hot dogs at the ballpark is no spring chicken, he smokes, he's overweight. What happens to him?

I think these authors and people like them don't work in The real world with real Americans.

Your last sentence is kind of ironic because I think that you could say the exact same thing about people who are advocating for keeping society as locked down as possible, keeping kids home from school etc. The people advocating for society to remain locked down seem to be people who are not affected economically by the lock down. I listened to a podcast (I believe it was the daily) they spoke with a Latino worker who relied on cleaning a restaurant in Oakland, you better believe that she would much rather return to work despite the risks. So you could argue that the people who advocated closing the economy don’t know these Americans.

[wideopenspaces]

So you think kids shouldn’t be in school?

I don't want my kid in school. And I'm glad he's doing it online. It's going well, tbh. I understand there are pros and cons but our case counts and death counts have increased rapidly since kids went back to school and I don't see it improving over the following months, I see it worsening.

The reality is that when you mix human nature with the focused protection, you get utah's results.

[fatlittlepig]

I don't want my kid in school. And I'm glad he's doing it online. It's going well, tbh. I understand there are pros and cons but our case counts and death counts have increased rapidly since kids went back to school and I don't see it improving over the following months, I see it worsening.

The reality is that when you mix human nature with the focused protection, you get utah's results.

Just out of curiosity why don't you want your kid in school? Is it due to risk to the child, risk to yourself, or risk to someone else or other reason.

[Tim]

I don't want my kid in school. And I'm glad he's doing it online. It's going well, tbh. I understand there are pros and cons but our case counts and death counts have increased rapidly since kids went back to school and I don't see it improving over the following months, I see it worsening.

The reality is that when you mix human nature with the focused protection, you get utah's results.

Texas is as about as dysfunctional as you can get. Between the George Floyd gold casket week long funeral and political opposites at the large city vs state and a LARGE amount of money devoted for political narratives and "cowboys with guns defending the Sam Houston Statue on I-45, there is no consensus . Throw in the opposing opinions from the "healthcare community" at the Med Center.
Schools opened and now. Low and behold, the summer pandemic is going down!

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

It is really difficult to identify cause and effect. What are infections and hospitalizations going down with schools opening? I don't think the data analytics is sufficient to draw conclusions.
Still wearing a mask.

[Lordosis]

No one is forcing the teachers to teach.
If the teachers want to quit that is fine. Everyone had the right to quit.

Who forced the doctors to doctor? Or the nurses to nurse? Or the grocery clerks to clerk? No one but if they didn't they would not get paid. Many didn't get the choice and were furloughed.

Teachers want their cake and to eat it too.

[fatlittlepig]

I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm no longer interested in the number of cases. The cat is out of the bag, it is going to spread, suppression is no longer feasible. Just tell me the number of hospitalizations and deaths, the number of cases doesn't inform me of any useful information. Does it really matter if 10 people in the white house developed asymptomatic SarsCov2 infection, or 500 students in a university test positive all with mild symptoms, or if some football coach in alabama tests positive and is entirely asymptomatic.

[Jaqen Haghar MD]

Texas is as about as dysfunctional as you can get. Between the George Floyd gold casket week long funeral and political opposites at the large city vs state and a LARGE amount of money devoted for political narratives and "cowboys with guns defending the Sam Houston Statue on I-45, there is no consensus . Throw in the opposing opinions from the "healthcare community" at the Med Center.
Schools opened and now. Low and behold, the summer pandemic is going down!

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

It is really difficult to identify cause and effect. What are infections and hospitalizations going down with schools opening? I don't think the data analytics is sufficient to draw conclusions.
Still wearing a mask.

It’s odd how this seems to happen. Cases go crazy, the narrative is created that it’s those pesky mask-deniers causing it all, despite everyone seemingly wearing masks. Then the end of days is predicted, followed by subsequent low hospital admissions, and tons of walking well. Cases reach a big peak, and it just seems to dry up without people doing things much differently. It’s the same here. Everything opened and reassumed and cases, so far, fell flat.

There’s still people coming in with it here or there. Last I checked we had only 3 cases in the inpatient hospital now, I might see 1-3 ED cases on a shift, with all going home lately.

I’m not sure why you get a huge surge, followed by a crash in cases. I’m sure it has to do with certain restrictions, but you can’t help but notice that they don’t always seem to correlate completely. There appears to be something else going on where large numbers of people get infected, followed by a decrease in spread.

I often wonder if we will see this pattern play out eventually, in places that locked down before they had any significant spread. It does seem to be occurring in some areas of the US now.

[snowcanyon]

No one is forcing the teachers to teach.
If the teachers want to quit that is fine. Everyone had the right to quit.

Who forced the doctors to doctor? Or the nurses to nurse? Or the grocery clerks to clerk? No one but if they didn't they would not get paid. Many didn't get the choice and were furloughed.

Teachers want their cake and to eat it too.

Many teachers have quit. They are not so easily replaced.

[Kamban]

Many teachers have quit. They are not so easily replaced.

But those were not planning to teach anyway in these conditions. So by quitting it makes no difference in the teaching numbers. By quitting they are at least not blocking a spot that cane be advertised for replacement.

My school district has given parents the option of 100% online for 20-21. Half the parents took it. That leaves the 50% which is further cut in half to 25% when in-school is only 2 out of 5 days a week per student. That is as much social distancing as one can hope for. It has worked well that they are opening up elementary to 4 days a week.

Most teachers do in-school teaching. A few teach exclusively from home. Very few quit due to the schedules voted on by the school board.

[cyrano7]

Many teachers have quit. They are not so easily replaced.

Is that true? When my wife applied for her last teaching gig there were over two hundred applicants for her spot. I know a lot of elementary education majors who couldn’t get a teaching job so they work in retail or at Starbucks or whatever. I thought there was a pretty huge surplus of teachers at least in elementary education (not for all positions - AP calculus, honors biology, etc). Is that not the case in other states?

[StarTrekDoc]

teaching = medicine. Not all the same even though the same subject -- can vary greatly by location/specialty/interests and private vs public vs small vs large -- so many flavors.

As Kamban pointed out if the school gives a wide buffet of choices for both students and teachers; many things go right and fewer disgruntled people. But the school needs to put significant effort and coordination into this along with families too to be able to achieve this. It's more often the exception than the rule unfortunately.

So what happens is the school/school district ends up making a large all/nothing decision that leaves large swaths of both parents/students/teachers with a binary choice -- rarely having flexibility

[Rando]

I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm no longer interested in the number of cases. The cat is out of the bag, it is going to spread, suppression is no longer feasible. Just tell me the number of hospitalizations and deaths, the number of cases doesn't inform me of any useful information. Does it really matter if 10 people in the white house developed asymptomatic SarsCov2 infection, or 500 students in a university test positive all with mild symptoms, or if some football coach in alabama tests positive and is entirely asymptomatic.

There is still a lot about this virus we don't have a good handle on In my area we are seeing 10-20 times the number of cases as we did in April, but hospitalizations/deaths are roughly the same as in April. A lot of of that is definitely increased testing - the people we would just tell to stay home in April are now getting tested multiple times. The media drives me up with the wall with their fascination with number of cases without any context.

[Lordosis]

Is that true? When my wife applied for her last teaching gig there were over two hundred applicants for her spot. I know a lot of elementary education majors who couldn’t get a teaching job so they work in retail or at Starbucks or whatever. I thought there was a pretty huge surplus of teachers at least in elementary education (not for all positions - AP calculus, honors biology, etc). Is that not the case in other states?

This is my experience. I know many people who want to be teachers and cannot find a good job. It is either move out of state or work inner city. That is if you are lucky and can do more the be a substitute. The union is strong here and there is very low teacher turnover. Free market and best of the best is a thing of the long gone past.

Also if you are a good teacher I dare you to do a good job. Put in effort a standard deviation above the mean and you will get pressure to cease and desist. Nobody wants to look bad.

Obviously I am jaded with some bad experience. But I am afraid I am not far off.

[Dont_know_mind]

Makes sense:


The Great Barrington Declaration

The Great Barrington Declaration – As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.

Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

It’s great they are experts on everything and their manifesto makes widesweeping opines about mental health, economics and virology. The assertions are controversial and really not very interesting. I’d like some statistics to back up their argument.