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Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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May 4, 2020, 01:53 PM
Menards was a shitshow on Friday, huge crowds everywhere, very few masks. Target was also terrible, many many entire (obese) families with both parents and several kids, few masks.
Went back to Menards to return something today and found that they're now requiring masks (available for purchase for $1). They also aren't allowing anyone under 16 into the store, though that rule has been in effect for a couple of weeks. They have a security guard posted at the door.
Did my monthly Costco run this morning, they're now requiring masks for everyone. They tore out half of the checkout lanes and installed plexiglass the full length of the remaining checkouts. They're limiting their bulk beef, chicken, and pork to a total of three items combined. TP seems to be back in stock everywhere, but I've yet to see Clorox wipes or sanitizer. The grocery store has plastic vodka-handles of 80% sanitizing alcohol from a local distillery for $20. I bought one of the smaller containers for $4 just to have it. We're still good on the Clorox wipes we bought before all of this went down.
I'll be interested to see the impact of Iowa shutting down affected meat packing plants, given that Iowa supplies 1/3 of the nation's pork. Stock up on bacon now, as this may trickle down in the next couple of weeks.
I've heard one guy claim that US figures are inflated because hospitals have been ventilating people without Corona so they can charge insurance companies more money. Pretty sure he was a demented conspiracy nut though.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
I've heard one guy claim that US figures are inflated because hospitals have been ventilating people without Corona so they can charge insurance companies more money. Pretty sure he was a demented conspiracy nut though.
There is more than one kind of ventilator. The more common type is an “open loop” machine, which essentially just pushes air/oxygen into the patient’s lungs, and exhausts the patient’s exhalation into the room’s air. That tends to spray the gunk in the patient’s lungs throughout the room. Yes, that’s BAD.
A “closed loop” ventilator manages both input air volume/pressure and output volume/pressure. This type is appropriate for the most severely impaired patients, as it can not only make sure they get enough oxygen in, but also enough CO2/other out. And it doesn’t contaminate the room and everything/everyone in it. From what I gather, it’s also most appropriate for COVID patients because by the time they need ventilation they are extremely impaired.
Ventilators are ONLY used by doctors’ orders. In my experience, just about any doctor in a position to order mechanical ventilation doesn’t give a good @%#&*($ about “charging the insurance company more money.”
Once someone is on a ventilator of any kind, a nurse and/or respiratory therapist has to monitor the patient and the machine pretty closely. The medical concept is to provide only enough help for gas exchange, not “over” or “under” ventilate the patient. Plus there’s the real possibility of literally bursting someone's lungs with too much pressure, or letting them slowly asphyxiate with too little... So yes, ventilators are an expensive thing, but for a reason that has nothing to do with the #@*ed insurance companies.
Let me guess: you still believe the virus naturally occurred and jumped from bats at the Wuhan wet market to humans. -t
You mean the way ebola, marburg, swine flu, SARS, H1N1, bubonic plague, malaria, rabies, HIV, Lyme disease, etc. naturally occur and jump to humans? Seems more likely than paranoid imaginings of some über-secret Chinese bioweapon somehow breaching containment and infecting the earth's population.
You mean the way ebola, marburg, swine flu, SARS, H1N1, bubonic plague, malaria, rabies, HIV, Lyme disease, etc. naturally occur and jump to humans? Seems more likely than paranoid imaginings of some über-secret Chinese bioweapon somehow breaching containment and infecting the earth's population.
It's funny how people are always so black and white.
It's either all natural, or a bio-weapon that was intentionally released.
No grey in between.
It also seems like you are NOT up to speed on the most recent scientific investigations into this virus.
SARS-COV-2 shows clear signs of RNA changes that are beyond normal mutations.
The normal flu mutates - it's why the vaccine is not always effective. So the fact Covid19 would change as it travelled from china thru europe isn't surprising. They've been saying it would. The european version appears to be stronger. Since most of our infection was from europe not china, we should be cautious.
fact: the virus has mutated
conspiracy: the mutation was engineered
We can argue the second once we deal with the first.
(I'm looking for the reputable source I read, but there's so much info now... )
The normal flu mutates - it's why the vaccine is not always effective. So the fact Covid19 would change as it travelled from china thru europe isn't surprising. They've been saying it would. The european version appears to be stronger. Since most of our infection was from europe not china, we should be cautious.
fact: the virus has mutated
conspiracy: the mutation was engineered
[ ] You understand the difference between mutation and genetic insertion, and how to detect it in RNA sequences
[ ] You don't bother learning about the difference
Which one is it ?
My source shows exactly that.
Never mind that the average journalist / internet pundit doesn't know the difference.
It also seems like you are NOT up to speed on the most recent scientific investigations into this virus.
SARS-COV-2 shows clear signs of RNA changes that are beyond normal mutations.
Are you a geneticist? Or a virologist? Otherwise, I don't think how even a scientifically literate, but non-expert can vet the veracity of this article.
Trump has consistently understated and under-responded to COVID-19. His administration also killed the pandemic early-warning program in China just months before COVID arrived. Sidelined the CDC when things finally got serious, neglected the USA's strategic stockpile of medical supplies, and failed to offer a national response. Leaving the states to fend for themselves.
That all sounds pretty bad, one might think Trump & Co are doing a bad job, but wait .... SQUIRREL!!! ---> Look over there, at China!! SQUIRREL!
They need a distraction, from the fact their own actions contributed to a global disaster. Gotta ignore & defund those pesky experts. So ... someone upstream in the pandemic? Maybe China, that suffered all the early deaths, might have secretly engineered it? Competence in clever virus engineering. Oh wait, incompetence, shooting their own people in the foot. And incompetence again, letting the clever Trump people figure it all out. SQUIRREL!
Yep, it must all be China's fault. No one else needs any blame.
@reader50
You said it in so many words, but I would add to that catalog that President Trump and his administration has no long-term strategy, it is just trying to deal with the media on a day-by-day basis.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
Status:
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May 7, 2020, 09:16 AM
Originally Posted by turtle777
It's funny how people are always so black and white.
But that's like...the entire persona you've built up here. "I'm brilliant and know everything and I'm always right. The people that disagree with me are stupid and 100% wrong and are the worst kind of fcking people."
Originally Posted by turtle777
Well, you could watch the Youtube video and see that a lot of the slides include source URLs (to e.g. medical journals, newspapers etc...)
Or you could just be a dick about it.
Which one are you better at ?
-t
As Dakar once said to me, "There's already a guy here that's an asshole all of the time, and his name is turtle. Don't be that guy."
A response to that "Plandemic" video doing the conspiracy rounds.
The following statements represent my personal informed views and not those of any institution*
First, background: I’m a physician (specifically a board-certified pathologist, which includes microbiology and laboratory medicine) with a master’s degree in epidemiology.
In the last day or two, several friends have shared or posted about a video “documentary” called “Plandemic”. The film depicts now-discredited former researcher Judy Mikovits who shares a plausible-sounding narrative about the current pandemic. The problem here is that nearly all of her scientific statements are demonstrably false. If you have more to add to this list, or credible data to the contrary, please start a discussion. I suspect there are many more false claims in this video, but these are just the ones that stuck out to me as a physician with epidemiology training.
- She states “There is no vaccine for any RNA virus that works." Incorrect: Polio, hepatitis A, measles, to name a few.
- Her retracted paper was actually not about vaccines at all, even though she insinuates that it was.
- She states that Ebola could not infect humans until it was engineered to do so in the laboratory. This is false.
- Likewise, many other zoonotic viruses have been shown to gain mutations that allow them to infect humans. This would not be some kind of new, crazy idea. We actually predicted it years ago: we just didn’t know exactly which virus or when it would occur.
- She states that the US was working with Wuhan to study coronaviruses years ago, like it’s a “gotcha” moment: yes, of course we were doing this – Wuhan is a coronavirus hotspot and it makes sense to study this family of viruses where it naturally occurs.
- She states that COPD lungs are identical to COVID-19 lungs. As a pathologist, this is ludicrous – any practicing physician would be able to tell COPD from COVID-19, both clinically and histologically.
- The statement taken out of context from the CDC death certificate recommendation reads in full “In cases where a definitive diagnosis of COVID-19 cannot be made, but is suspected or likely (the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as “probable” or “presumed”. In these instances, certifiers should use their best judgment in determining if a COVID-19 diagnosis was likely. Testing for COVID-19 should be conducted whenever possible.”. My physician colleagues are not being pressured to put COVID-19 on death certificates when it should not be there.
- The idea that physicians are incorrectly diagnosing COVID-19 due to financial incentive is also ridiculous. Medicare sometimes bundles payments for some conditions (i.e. if you have a heart attack, medicare may pay XX for your treatment) – it’s possible the hospital could get paid $13,000 for your COVID-19 admission, but do you know what that’s based on? The fact that the average cost of a hospital admission for a respiratory condition is $13,297.
- She states that hydroxychloroquine has been “extensively studied in this family of viruses” – in fact, it has not been studied well in coronaviruses. It HAS been studied in malaria, which is not a virus. And yes, it is considered an essential medicine for the treatment of malaria. Not for coronaviruses.
- Furthermore, the data on hydroxychloroquine are much weaker than they originally appeared: the small study that was highly publicized was not a randomized controlled trial, and the only patients who died were those who received hydroxychloroquine (and these were EXCLUDED FROM ANALYSIS!). This is terrible science. Even so, we want to investigate all possible treatments, so controlled trials are being conducted on hydroxychloroquine right now.
- She insinuates that there is a hydroxychloroquine shortage as a result of reduced production. In fact, there is a shortage because people who take this medication regularly are stockpiling it and because physicians are using it for COVID19 patients because they have nothing else to try.
- “All flu vaccines contain coronaviruses”. Nope, absolutely false.
- The ideas that sheltering in place somehow harms your immune system or that you may reactivate a virus in yourself by wearing a mask have been thoroughly debunked in other posts and I won’t get into the details here. Both national societies of emergency medicine have condemned the statements of these doctors, one of whom is not board-certified.
- Lastly, private companies removing false information from their platforms does not represent repression or promotion of propaganda. It’s helping to promote the spread of sound scientific information. If you think lies should be permitted to circulate freely alongside the truth with the intention of reaching people who won’t be able to tell the difference, you are part of the problem.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
There are days when I wish Trump would get it. It would make him take it seriously while in the hospital. But realistically, I see few outcomes:
1) Trump recovers. Most do. After, he's even more insufferable than before, about how it's not dangerous.
2) Trump dies - he doesn't look in the best of health. President Pence is sworn in. But Pence is a religious evangelical, who disregards medical experts. He's probably more dangerous to the country than Trump.
3) They both get it and die in close succession - horribly unlikely. President Pelosi is sworn in. Unelected and disliked by many, at least she's sane. Would hold the country together until the next election.
I figure 99% chance of our being worse off if Trump gets it, with option (1) or (2). I'd rather take my chances with the idiot than the true believer.
New advice here is to "stay alert".
We can now go out as much as we want to excersise, but only in household groups. Unless we want to meet one person from another household (each?). Except if you can't work from home should go to work. Only not on a bus or anything. Apart from if you work in a shop. Well some types of shop.
But remember, stay alert.
Be alert, your nation needs lerts.
This space for Hire! Reasonable rates. Reach an audience of literally dozens!