Coronavirus Covid-19 Is it Affecting You and How?

[promiseacres]

@Baymule I thought covid positive students weren't allowed in school?? We've a mask mandate for months now... cases are rising. I wouldn't trust them before or after. The news mentioned that schools are fine, that no one is getting covid there (they have put entire classes to online if someone in the class is positive) But we still aren't to see our families.... that's where people are getting it... from your friends and family. Not at the store or school....
IDK it just sucks. very glad we homeschool.

 

[Stephine]

Please do read this. My heart breaks for the doctors and nurses. So many have been separated from their families, sleeping in cars, garages, hotels. And people aren’t willing to put on a mask or keep social distance because it is uncomfortable.... oufff.

(from the NYT today)

“Health care workers are begging us

As the pandemic rages across the United States, breaking records nearly every day for deaths and cases, some nurses and doctors are reaching a breaking point.

Some have battled surges in their areas for months. Others have been more recently overwhelmed. Many are physically and emotionally drained and suffer from a crushing sense of inadequacy and anxiety. Experts say health care workers are ever more susceptible to post-traumatic stress. Some are closing their practices or leaving their jobs because of the toll on themselves, their families, their patients and their colleagues.

Particularly anguishing, some health care workers say, is the cavalier attitude many Americans display toward the virus.

“There is such a disconnect between the hospital and the surrounding communities,” one doctor wrote in an exchange later posted on Twitter. “I don’t drive home to bells, whistles and clanging pots and pans … I drive home stunned through a college town with lines out the doors for the local bars.”

In an attempt to break through that disconnect, about 100 of the nation’s largest and best hospital groups released an ad campaign today, in print and video, that is a call to arms — or rather, a call to mask up.

“We put our lives on the line daily to keep you safe. So, do something for us. Wear. A. Mask,” a caption in the video reads.

I reached out to Ashley Bartholomew, a registered nurse who recently resigned from her job in a Covid ward at an El Paso hospital, but stayed on for another two weeks because of the desperate need. She said identifying a single breaking point was difficult, but told me about an exchange with a patient who was improving.

She went into his room in full P.P.E. as he was watching the national news cover El Paso’s need for more mobile morgues.

“He said the news is making it a bigger deal than it really is,” she recalled. She tried to remain professional, but couldn’t hold back her tears. “I said: ‘You know, I’ll be brutally honest. This is my last shift and I’ve never seen so much death, so much sickness, in the last two weeks than I have my entire 10 years of being in health care.’”

Taken aback, the patient said he thought everyone in the ward was doing as well as he was. Of the 25 rooms she had been in that day, she told him, he was the only patient able to chat. Everyone else was too sick.

“This is a pandemic within a pandemic,” she said. “A pandemic of misinformation along with the Covid-19 pandemic. And health care workers, we can’t fight both at the same time.”

 

[Baymule]

@Baymule I thought covid positive students weren't allowed in school?? We've a mask mandate for months now... cases are rising. I wouldn't trust them before or after. The news mentioned that schools are fine, that no one is getting covid there (they have put entire classes to online if someone in the class is positive) But we still aren't to see our families.... that's where people are getting it... from your friends and family. Not at the store or school....
IDK it just sucks. very glad we homeschool.

They are not allowed in school. I guess the two kids that exposed our grand daughter felt bad and were tested. It is known that people shed virus before showing symptoms. Our granddaughter has been exposed, but is not showing symptoms. I know she was tested a few weeks ago, and probably has been tested again.

 

[Beekissed]

Johns Hopkins Study Saying COVID-19 Has 'Relatively No Effect on Deaths' in U.S. Deleted After Publication


by MATT MARGOLIS NOV 27, 2020 11:24 AM ET

Conventional wisdom is that COVID-19 has caused thousands of deaths in the United States and nearly 1.5 million worldwide. This perception has been directly challenged by a study published by Johns Hopkins University on Sunday, November 22.

Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins University, critically analyzed the impact that COVID-19 had on U.S. deaths. According to her, the impact of COVID-19 on deaths in the United States can be fully understood by comparing it to the number of total deaths in the country.

According to study, “in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”
Wait, what? Really?

That’s what it says. And, it should come as no surprise that not long after the study was published it was deleted within days.

Luckily, a back-up copy remains on The Wayback Machine, and we can still read the study.
So, how exactly did the study conclude that COVID-19 has had “relatively no effect on deaths”? Here’s how the study made this determination:

After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September, which includes the period from before COVID-19 was detected in the U.S. to after infection rates soared.

Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.

According to Briand, “The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals.”

Briand’s analysis found that the range of deaths amongst the older population has remained within the range of past years.

So, if COVID-19 has actually had no significant impact on U.S. deaths, why does it not appear that way?

To answer that question, Briand shifted her focus to the deaths per causes ranging from 2014 to 2020. There is a sudden increase in deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19. This is no surprise because COVID-19 emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, and thus COVID-19-related deaths increased drastically afterward.

Analysis of deaths per cause in 2018 revealed that the pattern of seasonal increase in the total number of deaths is a result of the rise in deaths by all causes, with the top three being heart disease, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia.

“This is true every year,” explained Briand. “Every year in the U.S. when we observe the seasonal ups and downs, we have an increase of deaths due to all causes.”
Here’s where things get interesting.

When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.

The study found that “This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years.” In fact, “the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19.”

Briand concludes that the COVID-19 death toll in the United States is misleading and that deaths from other diseases are being categorized as COVID-19 deaths.

There have reports of inflated COVID-19 deaths numbers for months. Patients who never tested positive for the disease had COVID-19 as their cause of death on their death certificates. In May, Jared Polis, the Democrat governor of Colorado, disputed official coronavirus death counts, saying even those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were inflated from including people who tested positive for the coronavirus but died of other causes. In July, a fatal motorcycle accident victim was listed as a COVID-19 death.

On Thursday, Johns Hopkins University explained that they deleted the article on the study because it “was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic.”
-------------
TWITTER:

JHU News-Letter
@JHUNewsLetter
·23h
The article “A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19,” published in the Science & Technology section on Nov. 22, has been deleted.
JHU News-Letter
@JHUNewsLetter
·
23h
Though making clear the need for further research, the article was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic. We regret that this article may have contributed to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19.
----------
They did not, however, challenge the accuracy of the data or its conclusions. In other words, the article was deleted because it didn’t fit the proper narrative.

 

[Mike CHS]

No matter what you think about the way this pandemic has driven such an extreme versions of "beating" it there have been excesses from our governments in the way it has been handled. Teresa and I have been and will be careful in what we do but we do that every flu season also. The link is worth viewing no matter how you think and it will bring a smile or two if nothing else.

CA Pastor Reclassifies Church as 'Strip Club' So That It Can Open for Services During COVID

Wow, that's thinking outside of the box.

thefederalistpapers.org

 

[B&B Happy goats]

No matter what you think about the way this pandemic has driven such an extreme versions of "beating" it there have been excesses from our governments in the way it has been handled. Teresa and I have been and will be careful in what we do but we do that every flu season also. The link is worth viewing no matter how you think and it will bring a smile or two if nothing else.

CA Pastor Reclassifies Church as 'Strip Club' So That It Can Open for Services During COVID

Wow, that's thinking outside of the box.

thefederalistpapers.org

OMG, that pastor was pretty good ...what has the world come to ? ......McCoy , go figure

 

[Mike CHS]

OMG, that pastor was pretty good ...what has the world come to ? ......McCoy , go figure

He is no relation that I know of.

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Our PCP Has canceled all appointments for a month as she has covid

 

[Baymule]

We went to my sister's in Conroe for Thanksgiving. There were 6 of us there, our DD and family stayed home. To date, our 13 year old granddaughter has not gotten sick. For Christmas, they will be able to quarantine for two weeks so they can come for Christmas.

 

[promiseacres]

Prayers @Baymule
I really hope our family will get together too... my youngest's birthday is this month too. I have sent invites. And suggested a "drive" through party if nothing else. But they are all welcome here.