Anybody want a Corona?

[BurtReynolds]

Right when I posted that I got a flu like sensation! Maybe I have the Rona now!

[tragabigzanda]

FUCK ICE

[McParadigm]

I don’t even know what you mean by it.

[spike]

Having Covid land in my house is the best thing to ever happen to me. Now I don’t have to try to keep up with the guidelines and McP’s of the world (no offense) for at least a few months.

Super immunity!

[tragabigzanda]

FUCK ICE

[washing machine]

Take care, Trag.

We got a notice that a kid in my kid's daycare tested positive over the weekend. Just a few months ago that would have meant nobody could return to class until a negative test. Now we're not even instructed to test him. Just watching for symptoms. I am okay with that and so is my wife. Our kid seems fine and the last exposure to the positive kid was last Friday.

[Rangi Guy]

Have we resorted to taking Viagra and drinking our own piss yet?

[Bammer]

Welcome to the party, trag!

We should really start tracking arrival dates/times.

[spike]

I don’t even know what you mean by it.

I just mean that you’re both well informed and have good intentions and a reasonable approach to trying to get people to see this situation the way you see it. Which I wish more people did.

But I’m so worn out by this that I don’t even want to hear from the informed and reasonable anymore. I’m effectively looking at my household’s positive diagnosis as a mandate to stop paying attention to recommendations for a bit. Obviously I’ll continue to be prudent, but fuck if I can keep up with the CDC vs County vs my employer vs my kid’s daycare shifting rules and suggested guidance.

Everyone fuck off, we finally got Covid, leave me alone for a bit.

At least you got this far, man. Plenty of folks bent to covid's will ages ago.

[Bammer]

I don’t even know what you mean by it.

I just mean that you’re both well informed and have good intentions and a reasonable approach to trying to get people to see this situation the way you see it. Which I wish more people did.

But I’m so worn out by this that I don’t even want to hear from the informed and reasonable anymore. I’m effectively looking at my household’s positive diagnosis as a mandate to stop paying attention to recommendations for a bit. Obviously I’ll continue to be prudent, but fuck if I can keep up with the CDC vs County vs my employer vs my kid’s daycare shifting rules and suggested guidance.

Everyone fuck off, we finally got Covid, leave me alone for a bit.

At least you got this far, man. Plenty of folks had covid break their brains ages ago.

Something something something about humor or self awareness

[spike]

Welcome to the party, trag!

We should really start tracking arrival dates/times.

like this guy, trag

[Bammer]

I’m at the Husky basketball game right now and it’s funny how as the game goes on, more people remove their masks

Yeah the arena was more contagious during the first half, and it’s ok now

[Stickman]

[Bammer]

Been drinkin’ pee the whole time, BABY!

[tragabigzanda]

FUCK ICE

[BurtReynolds]

I’m at the Husky basketball game right now and it’s funny how as the game goes on, more people remove their masks

Yeah the arena was more contagious during the first half, and it’s ok now

I was walking my dog yesterday and a maskless woman put on her mask just long enough to pass me then took it off again.

Weird side note, I live in a very blue town, but this woman had a Biden campaign t-shirt on. Who does that?

[spike]

She must be a member of the liberal media.

[4/5]

When a hospital says “40% of our current COVID cases are people who came in for something else,” they are saying that COVID is so prevalent that it is now routinely acquired in the hospital system. They are not saying that those people count towards their “hospitalized with COVID” numbers.

The only circumstances under which those patients could be counted in that category is if they became so ill from that hospital-acquired COVID that a new admission occurred….in other words, if I come in for a heart attack and, during my care, I become so sick with COVID that I warrant an ongoing inpatient treatment of care for that. This is a new encounter, with a new MRN, and it would be reported out.

If I came in with a heart attack, got COVID, and that illness slowed my recovery from the heart attack but was mostly treatable with a few medications, etc…if my COVID care needs alone would not have been sufficient to put me in the hospital were I not already there…it does not.

You may be right about all of this, I don't know. I know that's not the impression I get from articles and quotes I've read recently. Each of these is within the last week. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, though.

Spoiler: show

From NBC:

According to an NBC News analysis, at least nine states have reported record numbers of Covid-related pediatric hospitalizations: Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Washington, D.C.

Some of those children were found to be Covid-positive through routine testing if they had to be hospitalized for other, unrelated issues. But many have been hospitalized specifically because of complications from Covid-19.

From CNN

The HHS data on Covid-19 hospitalizations includes both those patients who are hospitalized because of Covid-19 complications and those who may have been admitted for something else but test positive for Covid-19. This has been true throughout the pandemic, though the share of patients who fall into each category may have changed over time.

From WSJ:

The data don’t distinguish between people hospitalized for Covid-19, and those who are hospitalized for other reasons but test positive for the virus.

The high amount of Omicron circulating in communities is contributing to the number of people testing positive after routine screening, doctors say. It may also be a factor in the seriousness of their conditions.

Among a near-record 514 Covid-19 patients in the Jackson Health System’s Miami-area hospitals Monday, for example, an estimated 54% were admitted mainly for non-Covid-19 reasons, the system said.

Exemptions exist because of course they do, and I'm sure it's true that their small subset of data cannot realistically be decoupled from the broad data once delivered. So qualifier statements like "some of these people are testing positive but are admitted for other reasons..." are journalistically appropriate. Some of the people in this data set do factually represent a recognizable type of outlier.

But I'm not arguing that the data is exact. I'm arguing that a set of standards is broadly adhered to, and is consistent enough (especially among larger institutions) that you cannot extrapolate a minority of outliers into "maybe they represent a vast inflation of hospitalization numbers."

For demonstration, consider Austin, Texas.

Austin currently reports that some 30-40% of patients admitted for other causes are testing positive for COVID. As of yesterday, Austin area has 3,379 current inpatient admissions, so 30% of that would be 1,125 patients testing positive for COVID. 40% would be over 1,300.

They are currently reporting 539 COVID hospitalizations. Because they are reporting people who require inpatient-level hospital care for COVID-based symptoms. Not every single patient who happens to test positive.

I read an article from The Atlantic that explains it similarly to you.

I'm sympathetic to the view that total hospitalizations are up dramatically and so whether it's with or for is just semantics but that we know that ultimately covid is the underlying cause of the spike. Idk if I have the energy to spend researching it, but context of typically winter hospitalization rates during flu season would seem to be useful. The Atlantic article is informative but also does some gymnastics about 'what if that guy's heart attack was because of covid' which is certainly possible but not currently knowable by the public data. I guess that shouldn't be discounted. But I agree with you and the article that it isn't as binary as for and with make it seem.

[spike]

I gashed the bridge of my nose pretty good taking down a wall mounted tv last week. I didn’t even consider going to an ER or immediate care, because I just assumed I’d be turned away.

Made me think about folks with more severe maladies or injuries that aren’t covid right now. That’s where we’re at, so who cares if the numbers aren’t absolutely accurate. Healthcare is strained, and there’s a free and accessible solution.

[spike]

Another anecdote… I have a friend who works in healthcare. They have providers that are sometimes getting four times their normal hourly wage to cover shifts, because people are so burned out. People are also turning down $1500 bonuses to work a single shift because the money is no longer worth their free time.

Does macphisto have an update on his prison hospital project?