Posted on 03/11/2020 7:12:41 AM PDT by Red Badger
Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus are swiftly ballooning across the United States, and President Trump's former Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert says time is running out to control the spread.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is overseeing one of the country's largest clusters, said "if you do the math" there could be 64,000 cases of COVID-19 in the Evergreen State by May, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the positive cases in the city are "coming in so intensely now" that public officials are struggling to keep up with them. He said he wasn't in a position to give the media a "detailed case breakdown" because of the rapidly changing number.
That seems to lend credence to Bossert's claim Tuesday that hospitals could soon be overwhelmed.
Bossert, who in his old position coordinated the U.S. response to global pandemics (he was not replaced by Trump, who made cuts to national security), wrote an op-ed published Monday by The Washington Post saying the U.S. should take notes from places like Hong Kong and Singapore, which were able to level off their infection rate thanks to tougher measures early on.
Yes, I did. In every situation there’s always one lone crazy who somehow or another got a degree and says all sorts of crazy things for attention, real media attention addicts. If you ever listenined to Coast to Coast AM, you’ll be amazed at how many degreed fruitcakes there are oit there looking for attention.
On the other hand, I ran into another doctor who said “ I am NOT supporting Trump’s position and response to Covid-19. Lack of testing undoubtedly cost many lives. That is tragic.” Should people agree with that just because he managed to become a doctor?
See you in 10 days! I’m willing to bet he is wrong.
Re the weddings, that is huge business in California. It has gotten so out of hand, they are have memory destination events to relive the first wedding.
A friends’ grand daughter was going to have one of these, this June in Hawaii at a cost of 5K per person in honor of their second anniversary.
All of her relatives told her to forget it, some were still helping to pay for attending and gifting her first wedding to the same guy.
The colleges going on line will create a lot of heated discussions.
One of our DIL’s is a Wharton business grad. She is having heated discussions with the landlord of the apartment at the Big East school her kid is going to. If they go internet at the school next semester. She can do her classes from her home in California not on the east coast in a rented apartment.
Also, if they go all internet, she is telling the university people,there is no way they can justify a hefty 5 figure tuition charge per semester.
“See you in 10 days!”
We are at , number-wise, where Italy was at 10 days ago. The variables are different in every country, but the core problem of medical collapse is the same. As I said, better learn a lesson from the nursing homes quick.
I see you are a realist about who was running the show.
Ha! That’s great!
The half dozen cases here in NH are all the directly linked to people who vacationed in Italy.
I also believe the major outbreak in Westchester County, NY was from a lawyer and his wife who traveled to Italy on vacation.
For many Christians especially, travelling to Italy is the trip of a lifetime. Plus, the Euro is so cheap right now in comparison to the US dollar, it was something I was strongly considering up until a few weeks ago.
Lastly, downhill skiing in the Italian alps, and Julian Alps is now a huge discount to lift tickets in the western US especially. Even Switzerland is a discount to any of the western US ski resorts. A two day lift ticket at Zermatt($60/day) is less than half the price of Vail, Steamboat or Aspen. The Italian and Slovenian ski resorts are even cheaper. Some of them in Slovenia are under $30/day US.
Ain’t workin indeed only the stupid people take the bait.
“who made cuts to national security”.
When Bolton took over, he cut a lot of dead weight from the National Security Agency. Including the pandemic coordination team (called “response team”, but had nothing to do with treating pandemics, it was a team to evaluate our defense posture in cases where a pandemic broke out, and seems to have duplicated work our military already does).
This guy never really “worked for” Trump, he was just one of the people in the NSA that it took a while for Trump to clear out.
“Hospitals COULD soon be overwhelmed”.
The easiest thing ever to say. If they never get overwhelmed, he can say “well, they listened to me and stepped up their game”, or “I said “could”, not “would”, or just say nothing and everybody will forget the dire predictions.
And if one area goes bad, and one set of hospitals are overwhelmed, he trots around a victory lap and gets a gig with CNN.
I mentioned on FR a few years ago when I had my second of 3 strokes I was taken by ambulance in the winter to the ER in the South Shore Hospital in Weymouth Mass.,and people were in beds in the corridors because it was over burdened with patients.
It won't take much to crash our hospital system with flu patients because of a lack of beds and some the health care providers Doctors included, will get the flu and have to stay home. -Tom
I’m trying to figure out who said this was “just the flu”. I haven’t seen that from any doctor, or any person from the CDC, it isn’t what the Pence team is saying.
I’ve seen comparisons to the total medical impact of flu, and they seem reasonable, in that we are working hard to keep the total coronavirus impact down, and so far, it is using fewer hospital beds, and ending in fewer deaths, than the annual flu is.
And that isn’t a comparison of how “bad” one is relative to the other. But as a country, that is currently the biggest thing we have to worry about, the total impact of the disease, and whether we have the capacity to handle it. And the fact is, at the moment, and looking at EVERY OTHER COUNTRY that has it, including Italy, if we can hold off any major breakouts for another month, we will likely stay well within our nationwide capacity, as the flu season ends and those beds become available.
Try to find out how many people are currently in the hospital for flu. I can’t find it. But 200,000 people a year are hospitalized for the flu, so I assume about 20,000 right now, if you assume 2 weeks stay, and a 5-month period. That is way more than the number of beds taken up by COVID patients.
Emergency field hospitals are, in fact, a good way to handle a temporary need for additional space. I presume that we have our military field hospitals ready to deploy into places if there is a local outbreak that overwhelms. I wonder if one of the cruise ships could be deployed for this type of thing, kind of like the doctors without borders ships.
Hey, maybe that is an idea for stimulus — pay each major cruise company for one ship, to be taken and stocked as emergency hospitals/quarantine spaces.
It is a pandemic, but “pandemic” is not a disaster, it is a natural state of virus spread. Every year we have a flu pandemic, we are so used to it we don’t even think twice about it, and only about 40% of the population gets the vaccine even though it is pretty much available everywhere for free (I got mine for the first time ever this year, in my local Giant food market while shopping for groceries).
The local government clearly needs a better process for “processing” the incoming paperwork. I am betting the local HEALTH workers are handling things OK on their end, unless they are government employees.
Hospitals are getting smart, and setting up tents outside to handle people with respiratory or fever symptoms. That way, if they are positive for COVID, they don’t infect the waiting rooms/ER/entrance halls.
They can outfit them properly, and transport them directly to the isolation rooms set up already to handle cases.
I am going to check if my local hospital has done this yet. We don’t have any cases in our county, but there are some a couple of counties over, so I imagine it is time to prepare.
First, that is what you need to do if you want to completely STOP the spread now.
Second, it does nothing, unless after the two weeks, you completely shut down all travel too and from everywhere else, OR require every person who re-enters the country to go straight to a 2-week quarantine.
And then also completely prevent EVERY illegal immigrant entry.
And close down both borders to all regular traffic, including truck delivery.
THis is impossible, and would destroy the economy.
Instead, we are going to manage the disease, let people catch it, handle outbreaks on a case by case basis. People will die, most people will not, and slowly we will develop a bit of immunity, as people catch and resolve the disease.
We want to make it to summer, when spread should be low, and then attack it in november when it gets cold again, and then hopefully deploy a vaccine in february of next year, in the middle of THAT year’s outbreak.
Ours has, the tent approach must be the directive.
I’m just sharing the claims of a random doctor in response to someone else doing the same. Apparently that’s supposed to mean something. What I passed along:
“I am NOT supporting Trump’s position and response to Covid-19. Lack of testing undoubtedly cost many lives. That is tragic.”
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