[quote=“1Benice, post:11896, topic:2080517”]
No, she died of sepsis b/c she spent an entire day in the ER, was ultimately found to have a blockage and the surgeon came in after being at a super bowl party all day and nicked her bowel during surgery.
You need to read my posts more closely before reacting emotionally to what you think I am saying. Many of your responses indicate you’re responding to things I didn’t write and don’t believe. I never wrote that Cuomo wasn’t thanking people. I never wrote Cuomo wasn’t giving credit. I pointed out help and suggested that I thought it would be classy if he acknowledged it (no claims on what he has or hasn’t done on that so far.)
When you think other states are important enough for you to listen to their governors’ press conferences then it would be reasonable for you to suggest that residents of other states listen to your states’ governor’s press conferences. Until that time, it just further illustrates the point that some NYers tend to believe they are the epicenter of the entire country and that the entire country should be focused on them. Similar to the claims of outsized importance during the epidemic that this entire country is experiencing. When NY indicates it understands there are a lot of people living in places other than NY and shares scarce resources with those other people then their claims they give one iota of caring about non-NY might be credible.
Sorry to hear that. Then she died of a medical error- see in the table, it is listed ( actually nr 3 most common cause of death after cancer and heart )
Now, what I see working (and not everything is but I’ll focus on the positive):
- most people don’t understand the virus because it’s invisible. It doesn’t give you red rashes or black boils, so people feel free to ignore it unless they trust the person in charge. There’s a big problem in that the president has, either from genuine misunderstanding or for other reasons, downplayed the crisis and many people just want to believe it’s all exagerated/no bigger deal than what we see every year.
To make people understand, compare it to the plague because that’s the only thing we have a sense of, from our imagination. Or, if you can make them watch it, show them History Extra about the 1918 Pandemic. Say that to Coronavirus we’re what Native Americans were to Smallpox. There’s nothing like Coronavirus in our living memory so to make people understand we need to use images. Use whatever works. - There aren’t enough tests to measure and conduct contact testing (and we’re well past that time in terms of usefulness, it won’t be necessary again till the peak has passed, region by region, ie., not till mid May in NYC and New Orleans, for instance, and not till July for other areas… I could see major measure/contact testing for regions that don’t seem very affected right now but only there. Elsewhere, tests are better used for health care professionals, patients that develop symptoms, and people who die.)
- Don’t use contamination cases to measure the urgency. It’s useful to help us gauge the progression of the disease but it doesn’t tell us where we are wrt the urgency/surge. Use hospitalizations and deaths.
- the wave crashes in different regions at different times. everyone and every state will be hit but not at the same time. If everything’s okay in your state, you’ve just not been hit yet but the virus is there, circulating. Try to mitigate, as much as you can. Homeschool your kids if school’s still in session, stop going to the movies, church/temple, restaurants…
- Don’t think Americans are “better” (equiped, behaved…) than the Italians or the French, or that we have a better health system. We don’t. Every country thinks the others were doing poorly because they/their hospitals aren’t as good
The thing repeats itself everywhere: many people think they’re safe because the “hot zone” must reflect some flaw or mistake by the city’s inhabitants and its leader. It’s clearly false. - Therefore there needs to be a national or regional timeline modelling the waves so that national and state leaders can coordinate. Once the numbers start growing and doubling time is 3 days, visualize it like a wave, and count roughly 3 weeks from swell to surge, 6 weeks for the surf to appear, and 10 weeks for the beach. [that’s assuming mitigation, regional/national coordination, etc]
- a national or broadly regional task force should know exactly how many ICU beds each hospital has in relation to their place in the different “waves”; design modelling => create an airlift system: fly people from a hot zone to hospitals in areas that are +15 or +20, one or two per hospital, to alleviate ICUs in hot zones. It takes 48-72 hours to organize a 1 or 2 patient airlift and it requires a lot of logistics and coordination, but it saves lives. Most patients stay in the ICU 3 weeks then need weeks at home to recover but any region where the swell hasnt started or where the surge isn’t before 3 weeks should be ok volunteering space. Also, by that time, there should be new ventilators and more PPE’s manufactured.
[here they use bullet trains retrofitted into travelling ICUs, but also use military planes and helicopters. Patients are sent to Italy or French regions with fewer cases.] - a sports brand called “Décathlon” had “invented” a type of full face snorkeling mask with the breathing tube on top of the head … that can be retrofitted to replace medical masks that use oxygen pipes/belted machines that health care professionals wear. A retrofitting design was just approved and they donated 30,000 of them.
(pretty sure I’ve seen it in the US so “Décathlon” were probably the first to import the idea rather than “invent” it…) - it takes about 2 weeks and obvious, repeated modeling by leaders for habits to change. Regular PSA’s are efficient, starting with “PSA’s” in the middle of all children’s programming. Here, there’s a specific bell and the message, with images, at regular times, both on TV and on the radio.
- stay-at-home orders won’t be respected unless leaving one’s home is made as difficult as costly as possible. So, if I want to leave my current residence, I need to fill out a pass (you can print it out or copy it by hand), with my name, address, date and hour of departure, and reason for wandering out (with the allowed reasons listed and one checked: essential shopping, mandatory essential job for which there’s an extra document the employer must provide, personal or children exercise within one km of home, dogs and pets, helping a vulnerable person, family emergency.)
French people are WAY less compliant than Americans but overall they’ve tried their best with this. However you have people trying to flaunt the rules, from people trying to get to their beach house and turning back when they find the beaches closed to boys doing wheelies on their mopeds to old people gone fishing.
Closing parks, beaches, restaurants, movie theaters, malls, etc, really helps. Open-air markets are only allowed if they have safety measures in place (city police making sure there aren’t more than X number at the market, space between the stalls, painted marking on the ground to indicate where people should line up or wait, no touching the produce…) People are really using their small shops, bakeries, butcher’s, etc. since it’s the main reason they’re allowed outside. - Townships need to know where older people live and should leave a note at all houses listing phone numbers in case they need assistance, want someone to drop by from the townhall, and phone numbers from all local shopkeepers who’ll be able to deliver food or essentials.
- price gouging, profiteering, and illegal sales require decisive, national action = for instance, here masks can only be purchased in pharmacies, with a prescription delivered to people who need it; hand sanitizer has a national price (but it’s hard to find). That can be adapted to whatever’s a problem here.
- each parent has a 2-week paid time at home if they have a child under 15 at home and can’t telecommute. Really useful for the parent AND for the economy because the stay-at-home parent buys a lot of stuff for that time.
- to prepare for the economic recovery, all companies that furlough their employees rather than lay them off are guaranteed a subsidy to be able to pay them 84% full salary except for hourly/salaried minimum wage workers who will receive 100%; a condition for the government ‘salary bailout’ is no stock buybacks and no dividends paid to shareholders in 2020.
- 25 countries in the UE have been negotiating together to get medical equipment (ventilators, PPE/N95 masks, etc) - the supply chains are all disrupted and all are being pressured at the same time, and lots of Chinese products have arrived molded, so there’s a strong effort to
- To conclude, something a bit lighter: this being France, a new literary genre has sprung, that of the “lockdown log”, “sheltering journal”, or “coronavirus chronicle”, complete with its own controversy
– more seriously, try to keep a journal, or have your kids keep a journal, or keep one together, not for public consumption (not online), perhaps in a nice, small notebook you’ve bought on purpose. One day you’ll close its covers and it’ll be the last entry, an object to pick off the shelf to remember something historic that we survived.
No kidding. Surgical error (in a h*llhole hospital. Conversation for elsewhere). Tell me something I don’t know. 
Lets move on and not get sidetracked. And stirs up bad memories of a horrible experience.
I agree with this. ^ ^
I’m glad he changed his mind since he did the same thing for a while anyway in California. And he himself didn’t decide to bring the Americans home for quite a while into the whole thing as well. I get and appreciate that you are trying to post positive things and i will check out what was in the presser today but that one was just too glaring for me. It was wrong in his words when Japan did it but when a ship was off California he didn’t want to let the people off because he didn’t want the numbers to go up because it would look bad and wasn’t his fault (his words paraphrased as my memory allows but I heard them myself).
Resistance to masks in this conversation reminds me of the earlier resistance to stay-at-home orders and the idea of a longer quarantine. We got used to the latter… we’ll get used to the former.
@MYOS1634 , thank you for your post. Re the journal, I’m reminded of “The Diary of Samuel Pepys,” in which he wrote about, among other things, the Great Plague, which occurred in 1665-66.
I’m very sorry. That’s horrible.
@privatebanker I hope your daughter is feeling better.
New York’s MTA says ridership is down 90% since pre-pandemic levels
From CNN’s Rob Frehse
New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority ridership is down 90% since pre-pandemic levels, the group’s chairman and CEO Pat Foye announced Tuesday.
Foye, who tested positive for coronavirus last weekend, said 582 of his colleagues have also tested positive for the coronavirus.
Foye said reports of overcrowding incidents have been sporadic and that the MTA is working closely with the NYPD to control crowding and tell riders to move to a different car or wait for another train. He added that people are mostly complying and he believes no summonses have been issued.
“It’s a very sporadic number of cases given the significant decline in ridership,” Foye said. “But we’re working hard to get the message out and working closely with the NYPD and the MTA Police.”
At least 80% of Americans are under stay-at-home orders
More than 262 million Americans are currently under stay-at-home orders – over 80% of the US population – according to a CNN count.
This count includes state, city and county orders. The numbers were tallied using US census data.
Among the most heavily impacted states are:
California: 39.5 million people
New York: 19.4 million people
Illinois: 12.6 million people
Ohio: 11.6 million people
North Carolina: 10.4 million people
Only one US state is yet to report a death from coronavirus
Hawaii has reported its first death from the coronavirus, leaving Wyoming as the only US state without a fatality from Covid-19.
The Hawaii victim “was an older adult resident of Oahu” with preexisting health problems, according to Dr. Bruce Anderson with the state Department of Health.
“This is a difficult time for everyone in Hawaii,” Governor David Ige said in a news conference Tuesday evening.
CNN
I’m hoping it has something to do with helping southern hemisphere countries that don’t have as many resources as well as refugees.
Macron has shown strong leadership, IMO.
A few weeks of lock down are probably feasible for most people but a few months, I see 2 problems : psychological ( depression, weight gain ) and clearly economical. We all take a semi- vacation ( not quite but not as productive as usual ) and then we borrow money from the future us to pay the present bills ( that is my understanding of the stimulus ). The inner me cringes because how on earth are we going to pay all that money back ? I am not a finance expert, quite the opposite but can’t wrap my brain around putting food on the table without working at regular pace. There has to be a reckoning day with all this money spent, right ?
LOL. God, this is our government. In a crisis. We are in such doo-doo.
@privatebanker: I don’t think I claimed I knew what was best for everyone, but those were things that didn’t seem obvious yet have turned out useful once total lockdown was implemented (it will be, sooner or later). If you don’t have kids or don’t like trampolines, don’t buy one, but I saw images of people buying TP and pasta, I didn’t hear of people depleting stocks of trampolines or oranges. Both of which will become very, very dear once a total lockdown is implemented.
(I’m bullish on the oranges, sorry :D)
Same thing for the list of things I saw that worked (I focused on things that worked rather than on things that didn’t). Most would likely need some adaptation.
As for the big thing, have you heard of the pinprick test? Like for diabetes, you draw a drop of blood and the system tells you whether you’re immune because you have coronavirus antibodies. I haven’t understood the whole thing but they’re talking about it here. It’d be for later on, in order to know who can go outside safely. Right now thought Imperial is modelling quite some time when an immune person is still contagious so it might be safe for the person tested and not for others.
As for China, I saw a report about one crematorium, perhaps the same you saw. The number of urns at that one crematorium alone was well above 3,300, closer to 5,000 - and there are 7 other crematoriums in Wuhan.
In addition, we now know with near certainty the epidemic didn’t start with a cluster of ~30 cases at the end of December, but in late October or early November.
Anyway the Chinese numbers don’t make sense when you compare them with any other country’s. (Iran’s are highly dubious too though.) It’s a problem because they skew(ed) the data. And, yes, most countries don’t report all numbers (deaths in nursing homes, deaths at home, deaths complicated by coronavirus but with another condition… as we all know from college admissions, numbers can be manipulated.) However the number have a semblance of truth (ie., they indicate whether they don’t count deaths in nursing homes and that data can usually be found independently if you look for it, and they follow the same model every day so that the progression can be mapped out.) China’s numbers make no sense and probably lulled Western leaders into complacency throughout January. February is when most Western leaders woke up and by early March it was obvious even to me what was happening, at what speed, etc.
North Carolina governor signs order prohibiting utility shutoffs for 60 days
From CNN’s Jennifer Henderson
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in a press conference this afternoon that he signed an executive order to prohibit utility companies from shutting off services for people unable to pay for gas, electric, water and waste water.
Services cannot be shut off for next 60 days, Cooper said.
“This action is particularly important since tomorrow is the first of the month, and I know that’s a date many families fear when they can’t make ends meet,” Cooper said. “These protections will help families stay in their homes and keep vital services like electricity, water, and communications going as we stay at home.”
Nevada governor asks people entering the state to self-quarantine for 14 days
CNN’s Jessica Jordan
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak issued a travel advisory Tuesday asking everyone entering the state to self-quarantine for 14 days even if they have no symptoms of the novel coronavirus.
“Nevada will always be a welcoming spot for travelers, but out of an abundance of caution, we are asking everyone to Stay Home for Nevada, especially if you have symptoms,” he said in a written statement.
The advisory does not apply to essential workers, including in the healthcare and food supply industries.
International law of the sea: all signees have an obligation to assist a ship and persons in distress.
Why America is scared and confused: Even the experts are getting it wrong
The kaleidoscope of changing messages has created more fear, confusion and distrust.
The CDC said Americans don’t need masks — but now they might. The agency said the virus spread through “droplets” from coughs and sneezes — but then warned about catching it from people with no symptoms, or even from surfaces, like subway turnstiles or metal shopping carts.
It said young people are at low risk — but the hospital beds and morgues of New York called that into question.
America’s best scientists and its vaunted public health agency are still learning on the job about the coronavirus. For a terrified American public, the kaleidoscope of changing messages has created more fear, confusion and distrust.
Scientists are used to gaining knowledge one step at a time — and they’ve learned a lot in a hurry about a virus none of them had ever seen before, allowing the search for treatments and vaccines to begin. But the virus always seems one step ahead of them.
And they aren’t moving at the velocity the public craves in a crisis of this magnitude. It only gets worse when the voices of science must compete with the voices of politics.
And while Americans may be used to elected officials’ spin for political gain, the inconsistencies from trusted public health officials have left the public with an understanding that’s muddled at best.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented threat,” said former CDC Director Tom Frieden via email. “I think that people understand that we’re learning more every day, though gaps in understanding come partly from the mixed messaging being delivered by different individuals, agencies and media outlets.”
Fauci: ‘Models are as good as the assumptions you put into them’
When the CDC has tried to be blunt — most notably when epidemic expert Nancy Messonnier told reporters in February that Americans should prepare for community spread of the illness and “severe disruption” to their lives — the White House quickly put out a competing, more reassuring message.
The CDC has since played only a minor role in communicating with the public about the pandemic — and their statements don’t always perfectly match up with what the White House task force says.
“Let’s be frank,“ said Frieden. “What Dr. Nancy Messonnier has said was exactly right, and at exactly the right time.” He said he wished the CDC had been briefing the public “every single day.” Instead, the leading public health agency has been shunted to the communication sidelines.
John Auerbach, who leads the nonpartisan organization Trust for America’s Health, said the public health officials generally were clear about what they knew and what they didn’t. But that wasn’t always the case with elected officials who “sometimes made definitive statements that turn out to not be the case.”
The CDC’s own missteps on testing hurt its standing within President Donald Trump’s circle. And the testing delays also hampered the public health response, as the experts did not have a handle on how far or how fast the virus was spreading.
The CDC also was not always on message.
For instance when the White House two weeks ago announced its social distancing campaign and urged people not to gather in groups greater than 10, the CDC still had on its website the prior day’s recommendation to avoid groups under 50.
Just this week, CDC Director Robert Redfield granted a rare local radio interview stressing how people with no symptoms could still infect someone else. Earlier in the epidemic, scientists didn’t have conclusive evidence of asymptomatic transmission and they didn’t stress it as a risk.
That lack of visibility — the public’s inability to hear directly from the agency about what it’s learning — undermines the trust that’s essential in a crisis, said former CDC acting Director Richard Besser, who now runs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
“Trust is the critical factor,” Besser said. “You develop trust by being transparent, by explaining on a daily basis what you do know, don’t know and what you are doing to get more information.”
Officials are still all over the place on whether the public should wear masks. And if they do change the recommendations and urge people to wear them, they’ll have to first, explain to the public that it’s more about preventing people from spreading the virus than catching it; second, that it doesn’t replace social distancing; and third — contrary to what’s appearing on social media — the earlier advice was based on the best science available then, not because the masks were in short supply.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/31/experts-coronavirus-cdc-158313
@privatebanker I’m watching it now and Trump started out much more humble than I have heard him in other similar press events. I am now at 48 min (skipped the reporters coming in) and it looks to be about a nearly 3 hour video. I won’t be watching all almost 2 more hours. So far I think what has been said is good stuff that the country needs to hear. I’m not hearing new info so far. Maybe that comes later.
More now on that warning from US Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said the world faces the most challenging crisis since the second world war.
There is also a risk that the combination of the disease and its economic impact will contribute to enhanced instability, enhanced unrest, and enhanced conflict, the UN chief said at the launch of a report on the socioeconomic impacts of Covid-19.
Guterres called for a much stronger and more effective global response to the coronavirus pandemic and to the social and economic devastation that Covid-19 is causing.
“We are facing a global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations. One that is killing people, spreading human suffering, and upending peoples lives,” the report said.
“The secretary-general told reporters: The magnitude of the response must match the scale of the crisis large-scale, coordinated and comprehensive, with country and international responses being guided by the World Health Organization.”
He stressed that we are still very far from where we need to be to effectively fight the virus and its impacts worldwide.
He said many countries are not respecting WHO guidelines, and that while US$5 trillion has been mobilised, most of that money was from and for the developed world, including $2 trillion in the United States to support their own economy. (Guardian)
President Trump has said he will speak to Florida governor about two coronavirus-stricken cruise ships stranded at sea during his White House Press briefing on Tuesday.
Four people have died, nine people have tested positive for Covid-19 and dozens are ill on the Zaandam and Rotterdam ships, which are traveling towards Florida to attempt to dock after several Latin American countries refused to allow them into port.
Port Everglades has not yet confirmed whether the boats will be allowed to dock in Fort Lauderdale.
On Monday, Ron DeSantis has said passengers on the ships cannot be “dumped”in his state, dismissing them as mostly “foreigners”. But President Trump said he did not want the cruise liners to become “ghost ships” and said he would do the right thing “for humanity”.
President Trump told reporters: “You have people that are dying on the ship who are least very sick, but they are dying on the ship. I’m going to do what is right. Not only for us but for humanity. These are two big ships and they have a lot of very sick people. I’ll be speaking to the governor.”
The operator of a coronavirus-stricken cruise liner has warned that more people could die at sea after several Caribbean countries refused to accept two emergency medical evacuations from the ships. (Guardian)
Turkmenistan bans media from using the word “coronavirus”
An international media freedom watchdog says the autocratic ex-Soviet nation of Turkmenistan has banned the media from using the word “coronavirus”, AP reports.
Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday the word also has been removed from health information brochures distributed in schools, hospitals and workplaces. The gas-rich Central Asian nation that neighbours Iran so far has reported no cases of the new coronavirus. Iran has reported more than 44,000 cases.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said people wearing face masks or talking about the coronavirus are liable to be arrested by plainclothes police. Ranked last in the group’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index, Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most closed countries.
Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ruled the country since 2006 through an all-encompassing personality cult that styles him as Turkmenistan’s “arkadaq,” or protector. (Guardian)