For those in the US, you can start to order test kits via USPS
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Coronavirus (Covid-19) informational thread
- Thread starter yaxomoxay
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Awesome, thanks for sharing.For those in the US, you can start to order test kits via USPS
More likely? I highly doubt that. But either way, it's a distinction without a difference ultimately.
I would love to hear your explanation of how Covid infection directly causes a drug overdose or homicide.
I understand your frustration. As you mentioned, the CDC has admitted that they are classifying people admitted with incidental COVID (test positive, but have: gun shot wounds, appendicitis, heart attack, etc.) as COVID hospitalizations. It is unclear how they are classifying COVID deaths. Early in the pandemic (per Dr Birx), they were definitely classifying people that died with COVID rather than from COVID as COVID deaths. That policy may have changed. Not sure.
Also, I think it is often very difficult to classify cause of death. For example, a large number of COVID deaths are elderly (65+) with at least 4 comorbidity (Heart disease, Cancer, Lung Disease, Hypertension, etc..). Did COVID push them over? Would have a common cold done it? Were one of the other chronic illness the root cause? It is probably very difficult to make that call, so these deaths just get included as COVID deaths.
Why does this matter? Because we are trying to understand the severity of this disease, so policy makers can make informed decisions regarding risks and benefits. While we don't want our elected and government officials to downplay the risk, we also don't want them to overstate the danger and severity. For example, most health officials now agree that shutting down schools was a huge mistake.
LOL. I would too if I had said that. I think we are interpreting each other differently than intended. My point was I think there are more direct COVID deaths than indirect ones.
Out of curiosity though, lets say someone lost their job at a restaurant because they had COVID and their boss replaced them (it's a cruel world). Desperate, that person ended-up robbing a store to pay the rent, and killing the store clerk (as an extreme and macabre example). Do you count that as an indirect COVID death? I would, only because the event would not have happened otherwise. But one could make the argument too many other factors came into play for that result, so it's debatable...
But such a death would be counted in "excess deaths". I think that was your point. My point was only that Net Excess Deaths < Official COVID Deaths.
The biggest benefits IMO is it allowing you to do things with others knowing all parties are negative. A friend and I already had purchased tests and took them the day before hanging out last weekend so we weren't as concerned. I get it's not 100% but it's still peace of mind.
My daughter attend a holiday party of fully vaccinated grad students that are tested weekly by the university. 18 out of 22 got COVID. When she got symptoms, my daughter took 4 in home tests. All came back negative. She didn't believe it and went to a clinic for PCR test. Got a positive test. I have heard this story about the at-home testing over and over from other people. I would not put much faith in these testing kits.
Fair enough. We also consider other factors like our level of exposure to others in the past week, knowing we're the only ones hanging out, etc. Right now the risk is high but using good judgement goes a long way, going to a party full of people would be high risk no matter how you look at it but as long as they're vaccinated they'll stave off the worst of it.
Good news @Mainsail, looks like the hospitals have collected enough data/experience to start adjusting their COVID reporting to more accurately reflect Omicron:
Subheadline:
Subheadline:
"Dr. Shira Doron, hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, said in a week's worth of data, the number of patients being treated for severe COVID-19 was well below 50% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations"
In other news:
covidtests.gov
Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19
THE ORIGIN “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak
covidtests.gov
I agree, I think we are both arguing the same point maybe from different directions. Those are exactly the type of deaths that I would contribute to indirectly but still definitely due to covid/or the responses we have to deal with, as you have described very well.
Excellent. Maybe we can now start to get more clarity around these hospitalization numbers. The media and CDC are scaring people with misleading hospitalization data. The narrative that hospitals are filling up because of severely sick COVID patients may well be rubbish. That said, COVID could be impacting the supply side of health care. You really can’t let a HC worker back on the job if they test positive….even if they have mild symptoms.Good news @Mainsail, looks like the hospitals have collected enough data/experience to start adjusting their COVID reporting to more accurately reflect Omicron:
Subheadline:
"Dr. Shira Doron, hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, said in a week's worth of data, the number of patients being treated for severe COVID-19 was well below 50% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations"
So, now I start to wonder what other CDC data is misleading?
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What planet are you on?
I have been reading about this pandemic from the beginning, and listening to the experts (such as they are) and many have said that the numbers are not accurate.
Testing? Testing 'everyone'? Again, what planet? America didn't start testing even double digits of people in, or out of hospital for nearly the entire year. The US STILL doesn't test 'everyone', or even anything even considered close to that. Oh, and the tests themselves are a mess. I did one test to see if the antibodies were there, and got nothing, zip, nada. It was the quick test. My doctor said 'well it tends to have a few false negatives'. So he recommended the more involved direct blood test, and it came back positive, however a physician friend said that test tends to produce some false positives. So how funny, one test says I have no protection, and the other one says I'm fully protected. So even the tests are not perfect. Here's the real tragedy: China, and many other countries were doing 'genetic sequencing' on their people believed to be ill with COVID. That is like taking a fingerprint of the bug, and pinning it to the wall. They KNEW what they were dealing with before they started treating the patient. Some reports STILL say that in the US the number of people who are actually genetically sequenced is in the teens! The problem is, the medical establishment has no clue what they are facing unless the symptomatology happens to definitively point to that possible variant. 'We' should have started from near day one, sequencing everyone that presented with Covid symptoms, and 'we' didn't. THAT is a clear tragedy in this whole huge mess.
But here's the thing, I've read some of your posts, and I think I will end any interaction with you. I know that many states have bad numbers. I know that many states deliberately did so to make their state 'look good', or not spook people. I know that many people in leadership have tried to deliberately slow down, or outright stop any testing, so in the end, some person can literally put whatever they want on the cause of death and there is no punishment for doing so. Some states do take it a little more seriously and require a legal attestation as to the exact cause of death, but when you have hundreds dying in a day, day after day, I would imagine that you have to 'make do', and delegate.
So I am not here to argue with anyone, and I'm not here to be a troll magnet. This pandemic has been a mess, and it has been deliberately mismanaged at far too many points.
My state (NH) did this last month. They offered eight tests to anyone who wanted them. They were all gone in a flash. They did a second round of four which we got. I also may have had Omicron. It's hard to tell. My watch indicates that my body's stress levels were a little higher than usual (50 vs 35). When I get the flu, the stress level goes up to 75-90. I didn't have symptoms though.
My daughter and son went to a convention with 10,000 people (required vaccination and the usual procedures). Daughter had a cough on the day that she returned. Her group tested before they left and all tested negative. One person in her group was from the UK. He brought a bunch of tests with him (apparently you can order as many as you want for free in the UK). One person had a cough earlier during the conference and did a rapid test and it was negative. He then did a PCR test and it was also negative. So there may be a run-of-the-mill cold going around along with the flu and Omicron.
You are welcome to offer all of your "I know... I know...." statements that you like, and disengage without offering any data or proof. I only suggested a couple of legitimate statements by the people making the decisions questioning what you "know". Regarding genetic sequencing, every country does at least some of that in order to track the variants as they emerge. At least we can agree on the testing, it's been a mess and does not appear to have any improvement in sight.
No matter how much they try to poke holes and delegitimize this virus there's simply no way the number of those being hospitalized can be discounted. In fact, it's almost insulting to those on the front lines who are forced to deal with those who refuse to mask up or vaccinate, surely it's anyone choosing a job in the medical profession never suspected this is what they would have to deal with.
What? In my metropolis and state, our hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID patients. ICU beds are scarce. Hospitals, along with the governor, are reiterating that needed surgeries such as for cancer are having to be postponed as a result. Much of the cause for this situation is people mindlessly refusing to be vaccinated, as those are mostly the ones hospitalized.
There were articles yesterday on cancelling non-urgent surgeries. Mass General Brigham is cancelling up to 2,000 surgeries per week because of the pandemic. The worst cases are where a biopsy is needed on a mass to determine whether or not it is cancerous.
I was at the mall today. There is a city mask mandate. About 50% of people, including workers, were masked.
That does seem to be the case. My wife had Delta in October last year, and passed it on to me.
A week or so ago, she started having mild symptoms, and found out it was just a seasonal cold.
Nine hundred miles from us, in a different area of the country, my daughter had symptoms this past week and was tested for Covid, flu and strep. All came back negative. Common cold was the diagnosis. So, to agree again with you, there does seem to be a typical, seasonal round of colds making their way around the country.
I don't think anyone thinks hospitals aren't under great strain, it's just they may be for slightly different reasons than earlier: whereas with Delta basically you had COVID patients and non-COVID patients, it appears with Omicron almost everybody coming in his COVID-positive, whether they came in for COVID to not. It may make the COVID-admissions numbers look worse than they are.
But even if that's true, it still increases strain because all COVID patients have to be put in isolated wards and follow other resource-consuming COVID protocols. There is also of course staff shortages being exaggerated by Omicron breaking through their protections.
That is all the theory anyway. It seems like this would be simple to answer if one could look at total hospital admissions over time: how does the percent of COVID to non-COVID admissions change pre- and post-Omicron? But I can't find any data on it. Does anyone know where to look?
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Okay, found what I was looking for at:
https://www.aha.org/dataset/2021-02-05-bed-occupancy-percentage-animated-maps
(Ignore the date in the URL, data is through January 13th)
I collected graphs of hospital bed occupancy from some of the hardest hit Omicron cities in the Northeast:
Note that even cities with spikes are within about 10% of their previous peak.
EDIT: Note I also looked at just ICU-beds and it was similar, except for Boston which has 90% of ICU-beds occupied (with a previous peak just over 80%).
https://www.aha.org/dataset/2021-02-05-bed-occupancy-percentage-animated-maps
(Ignore the date in the URL, data is through January 13th)
I collected graphs of hospital bed occupancy from some of the hardest hit Omicron cities in the Northeast:
Note that even cities with spikes are within about 10% of their previous peak.
EDIT: Note I also looked at just ICU-beds and it was similar, except for Boston which has 90% of ICU-beds occupied (with a previous peak just over 80%).
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