COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.] (18 Viewers)

[Saint_Ward]

I did some more studying of trends late last night, using the Worldometers data, and there are few more things that standout significantly as anomalies.

It is really amazing what can be gleaned once the numbers reach a certain point and trends form, and I can state with a very, very high degree of certainty that these five things are simply not possible, even if you factor in the proverbial death lag:

• Florida has 232,718 cases, but only 4,009 deaths
• Texas has 229,619 cases, but only 2,944 deaths
• Georgia has 103,890 cases, but only 2,922 deaths
• Tennessee has 55,986 cases, but only 685 deaths
• South Carolina has 48,909 cases, but only 884 deaths

Unless most of these states' citizens have different DNA than the rest of the world's, or their populations are remarkably younger (they're not), these numbers are clearly not possible. I am not going to say its intentional, but at a minimal, something is not being tabulated properly.

So, with that in mind, I decided to once again take a look at the Pneumonia and Influenza death data. We have already covered Florida and Texas yesterday, so I will now do Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee:

So, once again, either COVID deaths are intentionally being labeled as P&I, or we have an absolutely massive Pneumonia/Influenza pandemic on our hands in specific states but not others.

It doesn't take an Epidemiology degree or being a medical expert to figure these things out. All you have to do is be good at math and simple data analytics.

Here are my sources, in case anyone would like to check my work:

United States COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

United States Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

National Center for Health Statistics

www.cdc.gov

Stats of the States - Influenza/Pneumonia Mortality

www.cdc.gov

Confirmed deaths, and they say it can take up to 2 weeks to sort it out.

When you rack up a body count, we may not get perfect data as it is happening.

 

[Saint_Ward]

I would be great info, but it's likely not going to happen with enough detail about the types of masks and number of people present and for how long. It's just going to have to be a situation where we get lucky to have some of the info since medical ethics doesn't allow us to do these kinds of experiments with controls.

None of these studies have been. Theyve all been with multiple uncontrolled variables, but that is the most realistic. Kids in schools, people at work, we have 15 different kinds of masks, cleanliness levels, personal space, removing masks, not removing masks...

From someone who does scientific studies all the time, often you need some real world tests thrown in there as well.

 

[saintmdterps]

Yeah it was me. Fortunately cases in Montana didn’t explode and she has been playing it safe. Ow that’s she’s thought about it a bit more, she’s changed to not a good idea.

I'm glad. Your mother has put in her time in the trenches.

 

[Sun Wukong]

Just assume that we're much closer to 200k dead because of this than the 135k we're officially at.

 

[St. Geezy]

Another giant contributor: The number of deaths at home, as was the case in NYC at the height of its particular COVID crisis,

After Deaths At Home Spike In NYC, Officials Plan To Count Many As COVID-19

Officials say a sudden upsurge in deaths at home is likely due to COVID-19 and they are planning to add many of them to New York's death toll, even without confirmation by a laboratory.

www.npr.org

is now skyrocketing in current hot zones:

An increase in people dying at home suggests coronavirus deaths in Houston may be higher than reported

In Houston, one of the nation's fastest-growing coronavirus hot spots, more residents are dying before they can make it to a hospital. Medical examiner data shows that an increasing number of these deaths are the result of COVID-19.

www.texastribune.org

These deaths are not immediately categorized as COVID-based because dead people are at a lower priority for testing than live ones. But if anybody can come up with a plausible reason for these sudden spikes as well, please chime in.

When it comes to fudging data to compromise reality for political purposes, round up the usual suspects. The Venn diagram of these folks and those who rail against "the mainstream media" and "the regulators" and the "scientists" is pretty close to a circle.

Yes, I actually meant to mention this in my post but forgot to. It's too bad that I can't find definitive daily data on these at-home stats, as I bet we'd see a similar trend across all states.

I don't know if it is so much "political" as in "political reputation"/election reasons that this is happening, but rather I believe it is more so a product of COVID stat thresholds essentially being incentivized to keep low in order for states to remain "open." This is evidenced in Florida's case by the former LSU student who has claimed that she was fired for refusing to manipulate numbers for that very purpose: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_r...cle_b538bd2c-99f7-11ea-9e18-5f30512fd8a4.html

 

[Taurus]

The US really, really really really for the love of Dog really needs to get to where we administer enough tests to have a reasonably accurate count of how many people are currently infected and how many were infected.

Right now our numbers are like poorly presented election night results, we have 3% of the precincts reporting and we're treating those figures like final tallies.

 

[Taurus]

I don't know if it is so much "political" as in "political reputation"/election reasons that this is happening, but rather I believe it is more so a product of COVID stat thresholds essentially being incentivized to keep low in order for states to remain "open."

This is the capitalist version of the exact same g-damn thing we accuse the Chinese of.

 

[St. Geezy]

Just assume that we're much closer to 200k dead because of this than the 135k we're officially at.

We average 55,641 P&I deaths per year as a nation. Right now, through half of the year, we stand at 82,179.

 

[St. Geezy]

This is the capitalist version of the exact same g-damn thing we accuse the Chinese of.

Russia, who also saw a "Pneumonia spike" in the early weeks of this pandemic, was accused of the same thing as well.

 

[saintmdterps]

From a Facebook post. Take it for what it's worth.

Rick Loftus, MD
Coachella Valley, CA
Posted 7/2/2020
Update on COVID-19
——-
“I'm in a hotspot hospital in a hotspot region (Coachella Valley, Inland Empire, CA). We just converted the entire second floor of our hospital to COVID-19 care yesterday, July 1.
We have 65 inpatients with COVID-19 in a hospital with 368 beds. It is the same at our other 2 hospitals in the Valley.
We spent yesterday deciding the ethical way to divide up limited remdesivir (30 patients' worth) for the hospital patients.
My 20 incoming interns for our IM resident were exposed to COVID 2 weeks ago during their computer chart training; apparently 100% of our computer trainers had COVID19. One intern tested positive 7 days later and I insisted we re-test them all again, as there are almost certainly other cases with minimal symptoms.
I raided my household and took my entire supply of face shields to the hospital for the residents to wear on their first day, and I paid $1000 of my own money to equip all of my residents with medical-grade face shields. I require all residents to wear a surgical mask or N95 with face shield if they are within 6 feet of another human, patient or coworker.
Roughly 20% of our inpatients die. Only 30% of our ventilated patients survive. (We try to avoid ventilation at all costs. Some people insist on being full code and decompensate despite high flow with face mask, proning, dexamethasone, antibiotics, and a cocktail of famotidine, zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, NAC, and melatonin--we throw everything we can at each case, so long as it won't hurt them.)
My administrative assistant, who sits adjacent to the interns, just went home with COVID symptoms. Her test is pending.
In the Southwest, we are experiencing catastrophic exponential growth. I have had multiple families--siblings, parent-child, spouses--admitted with COVID-19. I had a 31 year old come in satting 78% on room air; he had been sequestering himself in his bedroom for a week to avoid infecting his elderly parents, with whom he lived. His sister, the only person he saw outside his immediate household in the 10 days prior to onset of fever, cough, and dyspnea, had also had fevers but had tested "negative" at our other large hospital so he thought it was safe to visit her. (Sigh. The Quest PCR test is about 80% sensitive, we think--it had emergency approval, so sensitivity data was not required. The Cepheid rapid COVID PCR test is 98.5% sensitive but is in short supply due to limited reagent availability.)
I'm glad some of you are sheltered from what unbridled COVID-19 looks like. It's a hell show. This is *July*. What do you think my hospital will look like in winter?...
This is real. Doctors in places with proper public health responses will see few cases in their hospitals--like UCSF--but let me tell you something: The laws of physics and biology don't change. If you're in an unaffected region, an introduction and poor governance and low use of physical distancing and masks will give you an exponential increase in no time flat (i.e. 2-4 weeks). That's pandemic math. And 20% of the population infected needs a hospital. You *will* run out of beds with an unbridled pandemic. There is almost ZERO pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2. There may be some "priming" of T-cell responses due to exposure to other "benign" beta-coronaviruses, but we have no idea if that explains the 20-40% of people who seem to get minimal symptoms. Asymptomatic infected persons, however, can, and do, spread COVID to those who die from it.
By the way: I've seen scary looking CT scans of the lungs that look like terrible interstitial pneumonia in a patient who had ZERO symptoms and SaO2 94% on room air. She came in for palpitations and the intern overnight got a chest CT for cardiac reasons. We didn't know it was COVID until her test came back 36 hours later. So "asymptomatic" does NOT mean "no biological activity." The virus replicates furiously in people who feel fine. Kids can spread this as easily as grown ups, even if they feel okay.
Related: I've talked to two previously healthy patients ages 32 and 44 who are 3 and 4 months, respectively, post their acute COVID. They continue to have cough, nightsweats, fever, fatigue. How many survivors have "post-COVID syndrome"? We don't know. Less than 20% but we're not sure. I've asked my hospital to allow me to establish a post-COVID clinic to care for and study survivors. Both NIH and UW are planning similar efforts based on my dialogues with them.
Autopsies show anoxic brain injury in many patients who died of COVID, not to mention microthrombi throughout the lungs and megakaryocytes in massive infiltrations in their hearts and other organs. People get heart failure, lung fibrosis, and permanent kidney injury from COVID-19. This is a disease of the vascular systems, and it can affect any organ, with lungs and kidneys being especially at risk.
In early May, thanks to lockdown, our census of 55 came down to 10 COVID cases, and for a brief moment, I actually had hope that the worst nightmares I had about COVID, as a biohazard virology-trained hospitalist, would not come to pass. Then we re-opened, without test/trace/isolate systems anywhere close to adequate. Eight weeks ago my county decided to make masks "optional," despite 125 doctors begging them not to do that. Now we're worse than we were in April. And it's getting worse every day.
You wanna see if COVID is real? Come walk on my COVID ward with me. It's real. Hearing people talk about it as if it's an exaggeration is, well, rage-inducing, honestly. Denial is the most common reaction to a pandemic. Denial is how the US will wind up with 1.1 million deaths instead of 30,000. I saw AIDS denialists get killed by their belief that HIV "isn't real, it's a pharma conspiracy of the medical industrial complex." Yeah, right, if you say so. I watched patients with those beliefs die.
The hardest part about this is, every new case I treat exposes me. I have assiduous hot zone technique. But no technique is bulletproof. If you keep exposing me to case after case, eventually, the virus will get through my defenses. I'm a 50 year old hypertensive. I don't expect to do well if I get infected. For now, I keep going to work. I'm one of the few pushing forward on COVID clinical trials, basic science, public health messaging, and diagnostic studies at my hospital. I feel a responsibility to keep going. I wake up with nightmares every morning at 4am. But I'm going to keep going for now. I feel very alone a lot of the time. People are not taking this seriously, and it's costing lives. -R
"Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after a pandemic will seem inadequate. This is the dilemma we face, but it should not stop us from doing what we can to prepare. We need to reach out to everyone with words that inform, but not inflame. We need to encourage everyone to prepare, but not panic." — Michael O. Leavitt, 2007
--
Richard A. Loftus, MD
"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth."
--William Faulkner

Wow. I could not agree with him more, though I don't walk in his shoes. This MD is literally in the front-line trenches of a war.

I agree that those who say COVID is a hoax is rage-inducing. I sat with my wife of almost 20 years while her 02 sats dipped into the low 90's and her lips were turning blue, and her PCP said if she didn't look better tomorrow she was going to the hospital. Thanks to a cranked-up dose of steroids and antibiotics we got through but it was a near-run thing I can tell you.

Those who make the hoax statement to me will get an unvarnished opinion followed by me asking on what evidence they've made the hoax determination. Some days I feel I'm not far from responding to hoaxers with a punch in the mouth.

 

[gboudx]

Thanks to a cranked-up dose of steroids and antibiotics we got through but it was a near-run thing I can tell you.

What were the steroids? Like prednisone or a steroid inhaler like albuterol?

 

[jasonsw]

Over 3000 new cases in 3 days and 39 deaths in time span in Austin area. This from a place where people where mask willingly since outbreak and has had strong mask mandates. Can only imagine what areas with careless mask measures are like.

 

[St. Widge]

I'd love to see a study of an office space with everyone in masks, like a variety of masks, and one person was sick.. either asymptomatic at work, or lightly symptomatic, and then did anyone else get it? How wide spread? Viral swabs, etc.

By the way, below is a link to a long article about the issue of whether COVID is aerosolized. It seems to conclude that it may be aerosolized, but that may not be as big of an issue as we think. But it also seems to me that we need to do a lot more study on this issue to figure it out.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...spreads-through-the-air-what-we-know-so-far1/

 

[jasonsw]

Wow. I could not agree with him more, though I don't walk in his shoes. This MD is literally in the front-line trenches of a war.

I agree that those who say COVID is a hoax is rage-inducing. I sat with my wife of almost 20 years while her 02 sats dipped into the low 90's and her lips were turning blue, and her PCP said if she didn't look better tomorrow she was going to the hospital. Thanks to a cranked-up dose of steroids and antibiotics we got through but it was a near-run thing I can tell you.

Those who make the hoax statement to me will get an unvarnished opinion followed by me asking on what evidence they've made the hoax determination. Some days I feel I'm not far from responding to hoaxers with a punch in the mouth.

I work with someone who thinks Covid is a hoax. He also thinks the Earth is flat so there's that.

BTW hope you and your wife are well. I'll never forgot your support while my wife had severe pneumonia and was hospitalized while dealing with what was likely Covid back in February.

 

[mb504]

These deaths are not immediately categorized as COVID-based because dead people are at a lower priority for testing than live ones. But if anybody can come up with a plausible reason for these sudden spikes as well, please chime in.

They've given up their will to live because their freedoms have been taken away by Bill Gates and the Mask Truthers.