Opening Up Results

(Full Metal KETO AF) #213

@mtncntrykid You are definitely correct about the cost of fast food, but I took it also to include a lot of ramen noodles, frozen fried potatoes, pasta and other cheap processed diabetic chow available in grocery stores being “not real” compared to the way most of us eat here.

(Bunny) #214

But I love Ramen Noodles :ramen::cry::sob::tired_face:

(Full Metal KETO AF) #215

@atomicspacebunny I usually just eat the MSG and dextrose packet. :joy::joy::joy::cowboy_hat_face:

(Doug) #216

:slightly_smiling_face: Going back to the very beginning. That was May 21, and we’ve come a long way.

Lately Georgia has had the most per-capita new virus cases in the U.S. and the most hospitalizations per-capita for Covid-19. It’s pretty much been 5 months, overall, with half the deaths thus far in the first 3 months, half in the last 2.

By testing, Georgia only has had 2% - 3% of the population show as positive, which is true for all the ‘top ten’ states, there. I think that in May it was barely 1%, if that. It’s a good question how many people have been exposed to the virus and don’t show up in those numbers.

(Jane) #217

A close friend in Houston said a woman she knows personally and trusts (not a FB post) lost her Mom to a heart attack after years of heart disease. The hospital threatened the doctor with loss of his medical license if he didn’t change her cause of death from heart failure to COVID. The hospital will get an additional $40k for making the change and it really upset the survivors.

I quit looking at any of the numbers as there is so much fraud and greed and politics involved, which is a crying shame.

(Bacon for the Win) #218

so here’s where I see red flags. A hospital can’t take away an MD’s license. It would have to go before a board and these boards consist of peers. He would literally have to murder someone for his peers to suspend his license. Now the hospital could fire him, that’s a different story all together.

FWIW I’m sure hospitals inflate COVID-related deaths.

(Jane) #219

My bad - I went back and read her email and you are correct - the hospital threatened to fire him and all of his staff if he didn’t comply.

(Ron) #220

This was posted yesterday in another forum to answer if it is worth going on a pre-scheduled hunting trip with other clients there. I found it refreshing to see a real world answer and thought some of you might share that opinion with me so -

" Generally I don’t talk about work on the internet, but maybe a few facts will help people with genuine concern make what could be an important decision. As a resident physician in charge of the COVID and pulmonology unit, I have some experience with the virus. I’m in Florida two counties north of Florida’s epicenter.

Reading this so far is exactly what I expected. Just like many diseases (diabetes, heart failure, etc), education can go a long way.

Facts: I have an ICU full of COVID patients as well as 1.5 other floors full of COVID. Most of these patients are older than 60 and have at least one other health condition, primarily diabetes, COPD, heart diseases, or general frailness. Some of these patients though are relatively healthy and in their 50’s, some of these have died or will have the plug pulled soon for failure to get better. Other’s lungs are doing ok, but the virus causes clotting disorders so they have heart attacks or strokes either before or during admission. Pregnant women are bleeding, rupturing early, and delivering very early or too early for viability. If these things scare you, or you’re in this high risk population, or you don’t want to give this virus to somebody who wouldn’t do well, then consider choosing a safer option.

Fact 2. Most of my patients don’t know where they got the virus and swear they had minimal exposure in public. This is evidence of how contagious this is. One brief interaction with the wrong person, and you could catch it (grandkids are often the only exposure). This is a good time to discuss masks. Unless you’re wearing an N95 that is properly fit, or a respirator, then your mask is not providing complete protection, however, YOUR MASK IS NOT FOR YOU, IT’S FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR. wearing a mask cuts down your aerosolized load and makes others less likely to walk into your cloud. This virus gets aerosolized, like a fart. You don’t have to hear the fart to smell it. You don’t have to be in the same area when the fart occurs to walk into it later. If you expose yourself to the fart, then you’re likely to smell it. Will the mask keep the fart in? No not all of it, but let’s be real, would you rather fart in your own coveralls or in your gym shorts? Personal protective equipment and good hygiene practices work, otherwise every employee in this hospital would have it.

Fact 3: people who haven’t lost a loved one or a close coworker don’t yet understand. When this gets to your town, it will leave a wake, even if it’s just cleaning out your local nursing home, those are somebody’s family and they’re gonna get vocal about it. Our town thought it was here, but I said, where’s the pile of bodies? Then the second spike came, now we’re starting to pile them up. We just pulled the plug on one of our own nurses yesterday, today I see several people following the guidelines better.

Vaccines: I’m hopeful we will find one, I’m not holding my breath. There’s equally as good of chance this ends up endemic like the flu.

Summary: this virus is real. It’s really contagious. It probably won’t kill you, but we don’t know it’s long term effects. I received a patient the other day that was fully treated for COVID at another hospital 8 weeks ago and was fine just sitting there, but his chest x-ray was still scarily abnormal. Without injecting my opinion, I firmly believe that some people will have life long fibrotic like lung disease (not good for hiking). Bottom line is, you don’t know who has it, but if they do, and you interact with them, then there’s a very high probability that you’ll catch it. Again, catching it isn’t a death sentence, but for the next 15-45 days, you are now the guy spreading it. Nobody cares about your health more than you do, so if you don’t want to catch the Rona, then you can’t trust anyone, because anyone leaving their house or coming into contact with anybody is at risk to be a carrier."

(John) #221

Lets say this is a true story (I agree that there are some red flags here but also know that there is some cases of fraud) I would like to know if the person did test positive for covid. I am curious because I understand that this person had heart problems but would they have still passed away had they not caught it because it does seem like those are the ones that die. I know a few people that have heart problems and this virus would maybe be the end of them however I dont know if you would say it was from the preexisting condition or from the covid. I am sure there are cases of people dying from heart attack that happened to have covid but I am also sure that there people with weaker hearts that covid caused the attack. I would also like to say that here in the central valley our ICUs in the county are pretty full but we also know a couple nurses that say they always run pretty full. Not quite as full but still not the situation that the news is making it seem like. That being said I do think that things are going to get alot worse unfortunately and it is mostly because (in my opinion) we did not shut down hard enough back in march. Now it has become to political to even think about doing it so we better hope this heard immunity thing works out. As far as a vaccine goes, I am not confident that one will be coming out anytime soon. What was the last vaccine for a virus (or anything for that matter)and how long was it in development?

(Ellenor Bjornsdottir) #222

for some reason the media doesn’t think small cities with big populations of poor people aren’t going to be petri dishes for this freaking virus no matter how good a job the guvnor does.

(Jane) #223

That’s a good question and I forgot to ask, but I will.

(Jane) #224

I honestly don’t have a lot of personal experience with the virus (yet). I got sick with covid-like symptoms last week but test came back negative on Monday. One of my employees self-quarantined for 2 weeks after her boyfriend who is an ER nurse in Houston (hot spot) tested positive and became ill. She hadn’t seen him in a week so she never became ill, thankfully.

His case was mild and treated with OTC pain and antihistimine meds. He is back at work and I asked if he had to test negative and my employee said no - just stayed home for two weeks, no more symptoms - back to work.

Oh, and my husband who had no symptoms was tested at the same time and they told us at the clinic to social distance at home and sleep in separate bedrooms. I laughed and said “too late - we shared the same oral thermometer this morning without sanitizing in between” And we still kiss, so why bother with social distancing when I was already running 102 F fever. Just the two of us at home so nobody else to worry about.

(Kevin) #225

Almost surely something the somebody just made up. Such a story would be substantial news, and reporters would love to get their hands on it. Endless bloggers would make hay out of it. Gov’t regulators would be all over it. What is described is improper action, and any hospital administrators that threatened to fire a doctor and all of his staff would be more-than-tempting targets for lawsuits.

So, come on… :smile: :wink:

Or, as they say, “pics or it didn’t happen.”

(Jane) #226

The woman died of a heart attack with no testing done for COVID. The family asked for an autopsy and she tested negative for the virus. Cause of death from autopsy was heart failure. Hospital still insisted COVID be on the death certificate to get their extra $40k.

You can be naive and believe it isn’t true. I was like that in my younger days but pretty jaded now at how greed and the pursuit of power can corrupt people’s values.

And they are pursuing legal action against the hospital.

(John) #227

you dont just get 40k by putting covid on DC. they would have had to have benn tested on getting to hospital and put on a ventilator to get that money from medicare to get it. and i think its for at least 96 hrs treatment on ventilator. If no ventilator they only get a smaller bump for treating a covid patient. To many holes in the story for me. I dont want to dismiss it but I cant just believe it either.

#228

Were they symptoms of immediate viral clearance such as diarrhoea?

(GINA ) #229

Whether or not the hospital got an extra $40k, they are putting covid on the death certificate of a person that didn’t have it. Why? There has to be some reason.

#230

Leniency is very common in society. Hence the obesity crisis.

le·nien·cy

  1. the fact or quality of being more merciful or tolerant than expected; clemency.
(Peter) #231

No, a poster who is very emotionally attached (as shown over many posts/months) to a particular skeptical narrative re COVID is saying they put COVID on the death certificate. That’s completely different.

This ignores that death certificates can list more than one cause, anyway.

(Kevin) #232

This still has all the hallmarks of a made-up story, or one where important details are left out.

What’s naive is to think that such anecdotal (and often questionable) accounts would affect the large under-counting of Covid-19 deaths. Even in an environment that normally would give less overall mortality, many places have lots of deaths that don’t fit within the usual mortality and also are not ascribed to Covid-19. Peru, for example, has only reported about 1/4 of such deaths as Covid, while having no other explanation.

In the United States, there is a lag in reporting. It takes a long time for figures to become official, and reporting has gotten worse since hospitals began sending information to the department of Department of Health and Human Services rather than directly to the CDC. The numbers are both catching up over time and also being delayed more. Probably have to wait until somewhere in 2021 for a really accurate count for 2020.

Right now there are about 60,000 such U.S. deaths - roughly 240,000 above the usual mortality but only about 180,000 counted as Covid-19. More precise numbers are in through the end of July where it was ~213,500/155,000.