45catfan

1 minute ago, Inimicus said:

If it does ease up most of the places that can host already have existing contracts that they booked over the last two years.  A significant part of my job is going to industry conferences and some of the big ones book as far as 5 years out with most medium sized ones between 18 and 30 months.

 

They are going to be hard pressed to find a venue

They may have to settle for a medium sized one, but I can assure you for the right amount of money, something will get bumped or rescheduled.

23 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

The problem they're going to have is that virtually every major city in a battleground state is going to have Democratic leadership. It's almost as if Trump doesn't think things through before he acts on a whim.

Major metropolitan Republican mayors have gone the way of the snow leopards, not extinct but very rare.  Politics have become too predictably divided between liberal urban-ites and conservative suburbia.  It's been trending that way for a long time now.  

If...big IF... the corona virus subsides enough to host a packed convention, will the mayors still turn the convention away?  It comes down to votes versus the economy. 

The RNC convention is moving from Charlotte.  Politics aside, this will be a blow to the local economy already missing out on revenue from all the other cancelled events.  The new city and state has yet to be determined.

14 hours ago, Tbe said:

Spoke to my friend who’s an ICU nurse today. Lots of unintended health consequences caused by Covid and related lockdowns. 

>hospital census at 60% or less. Nurses being furloughed.

>decreased surgery numbers to save hospital beds that were not needed.

>worsened amputations because of people waiting for surgery.

>Many surgical conditions worsened due to people waiting too long.

He told me about a guy who died from sepsis because he cut his hand and was too afraid to see a doc because of Covid. 

Apparently, we need a big public health push telling people they can go to the hospital for other things. Dumb, but sounds like it’s needed.

Probably coded a COVID-19 death too since was somehow related.

As for the furloughs, yep, heard that from nurses too.  You would not believe the number of surgeries that are elective, it's a huge portion of the hospital surgeries.  Once elective surgeries were cancelled or delayed until deemed "safe", hospital staff had to be cut.   They have budgets to meet like any other business.

In SC we are down to 6 deaths a day from 10 at the height of pandemic statewide several weeks ago.   Still too high, but at least the numbers are going down despite no vaccine being available.

Italian doctors are now say COVID-19 is losing it's punch.  While still transmittable, not nearly as lethal as the early/original strain.

Virus Losing Lethal Potency in Italy

OH SNAP! We got ourselves a UPS-USPS smack down!  I'm taken wagers....who ya got?

1 hour ago, kass said:

Agree. Here the talk has been about the number of ICU patients, hospital parients and the number of deaths. And not about the confirmed number of cases.

Sweden has a big problem with the testing. In the beginning there was not enough material because it was used when the initial tracing was done on people visiting Italy and Austria. 

Seems like they actually succeeded to contain that spread. The strains that has affected most people has its origin from Britain and France. (Some from the US.)

Then there was a shortage of testing material when the whole world tried to buy whatever was on the market.

Now there is a laboratory capacity of 100k per week but the regions (states) who are responsible for the health care only do about 28-32k tests. Utterly failure.

 

People mentioned age of the dead. Sweden currently 4350 reported deaths.

0-9 1 infant

10-19 0 people.

 20-29 0,2% (8)

30-39 0,3% (12)

40-49 1% (42)

50-59 3% (132)

60-69 7% (303)

70-79 22% (955)

80-89 41% (1789)

90+ 25% (1108)

About 95% of the deaths are 60+.  Again, it illustrates that demographic should use the utmost caution.  Granted everyone should, but especially these people.

9 minutes ago, cookinbrak said:

Pretty sure that 100% of people over the age of 60 are also over the age of 40. Numbers are skewed or backwards.

So 11% between 40 and 60. Under 40 was 1%, therefore 12% under the age of 60.

22 minutes ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

Yeah, lots of numbers being tossed out there, but the vast majority of Americans have yet to be tested and likely never will be so we may never know the true extent of the virus.

Even with a resurgence this Fall and Winter, it is quite possible COVID-19 runs its course before a vaccine is widely available.

True and why the denominator is smaller than it should be in calculating the death rate.  We know there's a LOT more people out there that have/had it and never got tested.  The 1.7 million confirmed cases is way off as to the number of people who contracted this.  How off?  Nobody knows.

3 minutes ago, Wes21 said:

That's similar to how data is looking all over the world.  But what they do is stretch the age groups.  Let's say randomly that 20% of the people dying are between 40-50.  They are taking that 40-50 range and going all the way down and making it 25-50 or something ridiculous like that, then listing 20% next to it and trying to sell the narrative that 20% of the people dying "are as young as 25 years old."  Its all in an effort to try to convince people that the data is different than it is.  Its deceitful and disgusting. 

Get the data form the health departments, not news agencies.  That's where I get SC's COVID info.  It's purely data driven with ZERO agenda.

3 minutes ago, SmokinwithWilly said:

Where I live still refuses to test anyone  who has not had a 103 fever for 5 days. I take the numbers with a grain of salt because of this.

It's not a confirmed case unless you have been tested and it comes back positive.  Think of the people that have been turned away because they weren't "ill enough".  There was a co-worker of mine whose daughter had a high fever and a dry cough, but since the daughter was young they turned her away saying they needed to take in older and more ill patients.  This was back in early April.  The daughter felt better after about a week.  Sound familiar?

1 minute ago, Wes21 said:

I pointed that out a while ago.  Its part of the misinformation they are trying to distribute.  They stretch the age ranges to make things appear different than they really are.  The death count by age group is even more deceiving in the way they present it.

In SC the number of deaths by age group is 99% over the age of 40 and 88% over the age of 60.  

The young have fared very well at 1% of fatalities, and Gen X has only a 12% mortality rate here in SC.  So nearly 9 in 10 deaths are over the age of 60.

16 minutes ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

Up to 80% of people with COVID19 are asymptomatic?

and

Read more here:  https://time.com/5842669/coronavirus-asymptomatic-transmission/

Possibly up to 80%.  That's scary part as far as contracting it, but the silver lining is the death rate is no where near 6% if asymptomatic people that have been exposed is that high.  It's literally impossible.  Take 80% of the confirmed deaths/positive cases and that's probably closer to the real number: 1%-2%.  Still unnervingly high, but more in line with the actual contracted number (known & unknown) compared to the number of deaths.  Right now the figures are strictly going of confirmed positive cases only.

4 minutes ago, Ja Rhule said:

North Carolina have a record COVID cases today.  Over 1,000 tested positive in last 24 hours.

Where at and has death rate spiked?  SC has a great site for very detailed information like this.  Right now, the main problem areas are Columbia and Greenville.  The rest of the state is in relatively good shape...even Myrtle beach and Charleston.  The death rate has stayed fairly consistent since the spike of late April/early May. *knocks on wood it doesn't get worse*

3 minutes ago, 4Corners said:

I’m under the age of 40 but wow this is the worst shape I have EVER seen the country in. Good Lord what the hell is going on? People really want four more years of this?

This pandemic is hurting countries across the globe, we are hardly the only ones.

America goes through some crisis roughly every decade.  Some of which are worse than others, but the still cripples the country to some extent either through war, stock market woes, certain industry bubbles busting, inflation, pandemics, etc...   A global pandemic is hardly our fault though and we are not shouldering the burden alone.

Hopefully we get through this sooner rather than later and have a 10 year respite for before the next shoe drops.

30 minutes ago, Brooklyn 3.0 said:

Sweden adopted a 'herd immunity' plan that uses more relaxed measures to control coronavirus, but a survey by the government found only 7.3 percent of people in Stockholm had developed the antibodies needed to fight the disease by late April.

A survey?  I wonder how accurate a survey can be?  Who did they survey, the health clinics or people themselves?  Either way, that's a horrible measure of people who have the antibodies because they are probably going off of submitted tests results.  As mentioned previously, if people don't know they are sick, why would they take a COVID-19 test?  Typically they don't.

The only way we will ever get a true measure is if the government sends out saliva kit and people return it like they would a census form in the mail and hopefully get 90%+ compliance.  Anything less is sticking your finger in the wind and taking an educated guess, but a guess no less.

4 minutes ago, 4Corners said:

I would tend to agree with this. Lots of people who were sick in Jan/Feb like I was can’t help but wonder. 

That was well before test kits were readily available too.  I've seen a clinical study saying nearly 40% of COVID-19 patients were asymptomatic, but going back to the cruise ship article where a real life setting unfolded and 80% of the positive cases were asymptomatic????  Extrapolate that out and there's a sh!t-ton of people out there that never knew they even had it!  The magical variable in this is how many people in America have likely got exposed to this virus and that will get you much closer to the true number of cases.  Again, the 1.7 million confirmed cases is likely no where close the actual number of infected people considering asymptomatic folks range from 40%-80%.

My biggest take away from that article is that a helluva lot more than 1.7 million people in the U.S. have or had this virus.

No point to be made here, just an interesting read.  Here is an excerpt:

"Meanwhile, the second study, from Australian researchers, looked at 217 people on a cruise bound for Antarctica. The ship set sail in mid-March, just after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic.

The first fever on board was reported eight days into the voyage. Over the following two weeks, eight people had to be evacuated from the ship because they fell ill.

  All of the 217 people who remained on board were tested for COVID-19. More than half (59 percent) tested positive, but just 19 percent of those patients had symptoms. The other 81 percent were symptom-free."

Article on Asymptomatic People

The reason I highlighted this section is these vacationers were confined to tight quarters with COVID-19 people and probably did not take immediate measures (quarantine, hand washing, social distancing, mask wearing etc...) to mitigate it as the WHO had just recently called it a pandemic. So this is more realistic than clinical studies because it occurred outside of a controlled setting without any preconceived notions or hypothesis.  The article did not say if any of the medi-vaced patients or those that did show symptoms died from the disease.

1 hour ago, imminent rogaine said:

Duke is surging w covid admissions. Units are all filling up and spilling over to backup units. These are from the rise in activity around Mother’s Day. I’m not looking forward to seeing what it looks like in another week or two.

That's the thing, people are much more likely to catch it from family than say spending 20 minutes in the grocery store.  Folks tend to let their guard down around people they know well such as family members, not to mention spend longer periods of time with them.  We were going to go to my in-laws over Mother's Day, but since they are getting up there in age, decided against it.  Chatted on Zoom with them instead.

26 minutes ago, Wolfcop said:

Man, that's great!

New York and New Jersey have green-lighted Pro teams to return to their facilities!  This was a MAJOR hurdle.  The League wasn't going to allow players back into facilities until all 32 teams were allowed by their respective state officials due to a perceived competitive advantage.

I'm not sure how many other states still have restrictions on Pro facilities, but NY/NJ giving the go ahead is huge.  I figured they would be one, if not the last, to do so.

NY/NJ Pro Teams Permitted Back Into Facilities

2 minutes ago, Ja Rhule said:

Probably due to density of the population compared to land size.

True, which if you think of it that way would be even more terrorizing.  So for someone scanning this article would see one city with death rates higher than other countries.  I'm sure that would scare the absolute poo out of someone that didn't know that NYC's numbers were completely out of whack compared to the rest of America.

9 minutes ago, Wes21 said:

It's a good idea, but it's not apples to apples.  Go back and look at how New York was turning away people who went tot he hospital, and how the shutdown of other types of access to medicine has led to deaths not directly COVID.

Why was NYC being compared to other countries?  Why choose the grossly mismanaged epicenter of the American outbreak when clearly NYC was the statistical outlier in all the data.  Why not places like Alaska, North Dakota, Oregon, Nebraska, South Carolina etc...?  Simple, it was for maximum shock effect.

41 minutes ago, Tbe said:

Exactly, that’s my point. Even if someone believes that hospitals are over counting deaths, that number wouldn’t be enough to overcome the huge numbers of people who died at home.

People dying at home were largely assumed to have COVID-19 if autopsy's were foregone.  It was easier at the height of the pandemic in places like NYC just to code deaths COVID-19 and move on.  Sure a sizable portion of them were deaths due to the virus, but not in every case.