The company I work at is laying off ALL the temps today. Right before a holiday... not that many are celebrating anyway. I'm glad they at least waited until the time the stimulus checks start coming out.
Map showing the current location of people who were on a single Fort Lauderdale beach during Spring Break, 2020. From this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/florida-spring-break-coronavirus.html
Here in NYC area they are full. Even in north jersey some hospitals are full and they’re shipping folks to small hospitals out in the sticks. Which is why my coworkers are out right now building more facilities. My role was small- line up some subcontractors and let others run with it. In fact, one strategy is to send sub-acute cases to rehabilitation facilities/nursing homes. My mothers nursing home has one section devoted to those cases. In related news, mom’s facility called me three days ago to tell me her health is failing. During last night’s call I was told that she won’t be around much longer, and it’s likely COVID. Test results aren’t in yet but it fits what they’ve seen. I can’t see her. Looks our brief conversation last weekend was our last. She’s apparently minimally responsive anyway. I don’t know how we’ll handle the burial, certainly no wake or funeral. This is hard to get my brain around.
Hospital census data? I'm genuinely curious what you think that information is, how it's collected & verified, and how we can access it. To my knowledge, there is no centralized database that counts hospital bed availability, ICU beds, etc. other than the reporting streams we have recently established. American Hospital Association has a survey that collected that information, but it's out of date and not free. CDC receives this input, but it's not in real time. There are about 6600 hospitals nationwide, each with their own system. Also, you can add beds and convert beds to ICU beds in a pinch if you have to, so the exact number nationwide isn't precise in real time, nor is it ever going to be. I think you're thinking of systems that countries with national healthcare programs have. Why are infection rates climbing faster than hospitalization/death rates: 1. Infection can take place weeks before severe symptoms appear. 2. Telemedicine is now a thing, and people are able to get symptoms treated at a distance. 3. People are scared to go to a hospital and are only going when things get truly dangerous. I'm glad you found an example of a place where the field hospitals weren't needed. There are a couple of other sites like that around the hot zones that aren't being fully utilized. I think we'll see some after-action reports about how patients don't want to be treated in field hospitals, and will instead choose to travel to other hospital systems. Also, a field hospital in a stadium makes more sense when things like public transportation are in operation. Also, plenty of issues transporting infectious patients to a field hospital. Lastly, quoting the Northcom commander, we're trying to move "beds, staff and stuff" from areas of high concentration to hot zones. Field hospitals have the longest lead time to set up, yet are kind of easy: lots of big, empty public spaces. No shortage of beds, so they can be aggressive. I will happily accept the criticism of over-reaction. The models we run are wrong, we just don't know how wrong yet. The numbers distributed are incomplete, and without better testing, it's the same problem: we don't know how incomplete yet. Just as a point of context: 20,000 dead is incredible. Suicide kills roughly 45,000 people a year in the US.
Also because no two hospitals are the same or run the same, census data would largely be unhelpful. Especially between varying geographic locations. For example, the hospital system I used to work for handled mostly public health needs and was constantly overrun with underserved, homeless, and drug addicted patients. Our sister hospital had twice as many beds, but didn't handle any outpatients whereas our facility saw a larger number of outpatients. We did more imaging procedures annually, but they were overall busier. Its hard to quantify. Some places have it worse than others. In New York, they were basically stacking bodies in the street. Here in Houston, the outbreak isn't as bad. Mostly because we have a lot of space to seclude ourselves and we also have the largest medical complex in the world. But like everywhere else, we are short on PPE.
I am currently working with Provincial and Federal people trying to assemble various data sets, such as medical system stats, and I'm here to tell you it's all fucked up. Right now we are seeing that data collection and reporting systems are very much at a "health board" level, which is usually at the city or county level. They are all different. Some data sets are being provided in a different format every day and we have to re-do the scraping/extraction automation we have in place. Some data sets are very well defined and structured, but still lacking data. Some counties don't make that data available at all. Some don't have that data to aggregate in any formal reporting. I am currently leading a project that is funded by the federal government that is working on creating a national data lake for this kind of data, and one of the big outputs from our work so far is "we are missing ____ data from _____ location, so in phase 3 of the project, we are working on a system that can be used to collect that missing data". I can't speak to the US data, but I'll tell you right now that whenever I see "official" numbers being used to back some theories in the Canadian media, it makes me angry. Even Doug Ford, who seems to be the most transparent of the provincial premieres so far, said, "we don't have the data... why don't we have this data?" it's fucked. Like, really fucked. We're hoping that in a year or so we'll have something in place that will help us for the next time it happens, but until then, man, it's a huge fucking crap shoot.
It seems that “dubious” is the key word when trying to find out just about any data when it comes to this pandemic. The more I hear it’s inaccurate the less I check. It’s just added stress none of us need at this point and if it’s not correct then there is no point, I’ll stick with recommended advice over numbers.
I don't have any, but I have heard the CDC folks working on that. I think they are looking at month by month. That kind of analysis scares me because how do you start to calculate excess deaths caused by people staying home, people avoiding the doctor's office, and mix in all the other shit (higher than average flu season)?
Since Trump has demanded the churches be packed today, and since many pastors are DEMANDING that whorshippers show up.... .....after today, when hundreds of thousands more Americans get sick and start dying, so you think THEN they might start questioning the stupidity of Christianity and how it won’t protect you? If you walk into a fucking church today, I no longer have a shred of sympathy for you or anybody you are with. At that point you simply deserve to get COVID. Cops should just post outside every cathedral and start mass-arresting everyone.
Meanwhile, in Bakersfield, a party of 400-500 people was broken up when 4 people opened fire on them. I'm sure they were practicing social distancing.
I have a sister who is very religious. Cult-like is putting it nicely. She said "if the lord can't find you at home, there's something wrong." While I disagree with her religion, I firmly agree with that statement. I get that religion sometimes serves a good purpose, for mental health, keeping people grounded, a sense of community, etc. But physically going to church right now is purely financial for them. Easter and xmas are their big money making days. Passing around the venmo email doesn't have the same effect. The pastors who are keeping the doors open and encouraging their parishioners to come deserve criminal charges. I can't say that everyone who shows up deserves it, because at least some of them just don't know any better. They genuinely think that their pastor is above the law. And those poor souls are the ones who will pay the price.
If people think the way a few thousand on spring break spread it around was scary, 73% of adults in the USA are Christian. You’re talking about all full-blown nightmare here. I know many churches are making effort to have Skyped/alternative services.... but EVERY church should be doing that. Your god will not be pissed at you for missing one day and putting the quality of life first, and your pastor only wants to line his pockets. That sneering snake oil salesman can take the fucking hit.
I kept seeing people talk about upcoming, imminent weddings, wondered to myself how they were going to continue to have these. Well, I got my answer. A friend from highschool was just on the news for having and outdoor ceremony, guests drove into a field and stayed in there cars. I applaud their level of dedication to each other to continue with the wedding and the sense to modify the thing to keep people healthy. I'm sure some people will not be as flexible with their big day.
I sadly know a few people who have died during this time. They've done funerals via zoom or whatever with people talking and everyone watching. It's not great, but they make do. Life moves on (except for the dead ones) and you shouldn't put everything on hold necessarily if there's workarounds available.
Chicago outbreak is a good example of why these traditional gatherings need to be held in nontraditional ways. https://wgntv-com.cdn.ampproject.or...-through-a-birthday-and-a-funeral-in-chicago/