My questions for you to ponder.
According to the World Population Clock: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
> As of midnight on March 29, 2020 we've completed 89 days this year and 14,333,621 people living on planet Earth have died. Approximately 750,000 of those deaths have been in the USA.
> As of 2:11 PM ET on March 30, 2020 the Johns Hopkins Website shows that 2,945 people have died in the USA from COVID-19 infections.
So, my questions are:
Were the 2,945 people who died from COVID-19 a lot more important the other 747,000 people who have died in America this year?
Were they super critical to our economy?
Were they more loved by their families?
If 3,000 deaths shut down the USA economy, costing $2.2 Trillion to fix: What will 200,000 deaths cost?
Each year 40,000 to 50,000 people die in the USA from the flu. Before they died, didn't a lot of them go the hospital and need a respirator? How did our healthcare system deal with all of those dying people?
Are some people more important than others?
Are some people more important than others?
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
Energy Prospectus Group
Re: Are some people more important than others?
So, my questions are:
Were the 2,945 people who died from COVID-19 a lot more important the other 747,000 people who have died in America this year?
Were they super critical to the economy?
Were they more loved by their families?
A. Of course not. Nobody has suggested otherwise. But that is completely irrelevant to the issues driving policy-making. But one has to be willing to discuss those issues, and for reasons that remain unclear, you are unwilling to address them (see below).
If 3,000 deaths shut down the USA economy, costing $2.2 Trillion to fix: What will 200,000 deaths cost?
A. 3,000 deaths did not shut down the USA economy. Other issues, that you apparently refuse to even discuss, caused the temporary curtailments of most of our economy. Your question's reflecting your inability to understand those issues and what is driving policy making, is why "numbers people" can be so out of touch with reality that their ideas are largely ignored by reasonable people and their talents unfortunately go to waste.
Each year 40,000 to 50,000 people die in the USA from the flu. Before they died, didn't a lot of them go the hospital and need a respirator? How did our healthcare system deal with all of those dying people?
A. Your stats are wrong (and also imply ignorance of the issues) again. Also your question reflects a misunderstanding of various facts.
Mortality from influenza varies considerably from one season to the next (some years it is much lower than the range you claim). More importantly, our healthcare system has to "deal with" far more patients than just those who die each year. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html If data exist to show how many flu patients who also require hospitalization also require ventilators (health care workers wear respirators, patients (some) require mechanical ventilators), I am unaware of it. But I am confident about the following:
1. Flu patients didn't all go to the hospital during the same 2-3 month period, as, during the initial surge, happens with COVID-19.
2. The health care providers who treated those patients had been vaccinated for influenza, which provided substantial protection against their becoming infected by their patients, unlike COVID-19, for which there is no vaccine.
3. There has existed proven, FDA-approved treatment for the most common strains of flu (unlike for COVID-19).
4. Flu, while transmissible, has a shorter incubation period and becomes symptomatic earlier in the disease course, than COVID-19, which is why flu has a lower Rnaught than COVID-19, making flu much less contagious than COVID-19, and thus less of a threat to infect health care providers and other members of the public.
5. Flu spreads far slower, and less broadly, than does COVID-19, which spreads rapidly and insidiously.
6. Point of care testing for flu has existed and is widely used, enabling rapid diagnosis and identification of infected people. Such testing for COVID-19 has not existed, resulting in delays in diagnosis, positive identification, and quarantine measures, exacerbating spread.
7. Mortality rates from flu are about 0.1%, while COVID-19 mortality has been estimated at 2-3%, but hopefully will be lower in the U.S (currently about 1.9%). So, mortality of COVID-19 is, so far, generally estimated to be 10-20 times greater than flu.
8. Flu has never (in recent years) caused a complete overwhelming of our health care system. COVID-19 could, in some areas, and especially if aggressive mitigation measures are not taken.
9. Flu has never resulted in mass rationing of health care that would be necessary to save patients' lives. COVID-19 threatens to do so, which, if it were otherwise preventable, nearly all Americans (except a few numbers people) would find repulsive, contrary to their sense of morality, and unacceptable.
10. Flu has never presented the level of risk to treating health care workers that COVID-19 does. Large numbers of doctors in Italy have died (unverified report yesterday said over 60). Health care workers are humans, have families, and (for those who care only about statistics) take many years to replace when they suddenly disappear from the workforce.
11. Flu has never presented the level of risk to society generally, including the general work force, that COVID-19 does (far higher risk of morbidity; 10x-20x higher mortality), especially until there is an effective vaccine.
12. Flu disease burden on the health care system does not disappear just because there is an outbreak of COVID-19. COVID-19 outbreak adds to the disease burden of flu. The health care system is not prepared for this added burden either in terms of equipment such as personal protective equipment (masks, shields, gowns), clinical equipment (ventilators), or facilities (ICU beds), or in terms of skilled professionals (ICU doctors, infectious disease doctors, ICU nurses, respiratory therapists). Hospitals can't afford to have hundreds of ICU beds just sitting around waiting for a pandemic that requires additional ICU beds and staff to attend them.
Were the 2,945 people who died from COVID-19 a lot more important the other 747,000 people who have died in America this year?
Were they super critical to the economy?
Were they more loved by their families?
A. Of course not. Nobody has suggested otherwise. But that is completely irrelevant to the issues driving policy-making. But one has to be willing to discuss those issues, and for reasons that remain unclear, you are unwilling to address them (see below).
If 3,000 deaths shut down the USA economy, costing $2.2 Trillion to fix: What will 200,000 deaths cost?
A. 3,000 deaths did not shut down the USA economy. Other issues, that you apparently refuse to even discuss, caused the temporary curtailments of most of our economy. Your question's reflecting your inability to understand those issues and what is driving policy making, is why "numbers people" can be so out of touch with reality that their ideas are largely ignored by reasonable people and their talents unfortunately go to waste.
Each year 40,000 to 50,000 people die in the USA from the flu. Before they died, didn't a lot of them go the hospital and need a respirator? How did our healthcare system deal with all of those dying people?
A. Your stats are wrong (and also imply ignorance of the issues) again. Also your question reflects a misunderstanding of various facts.
Mortality from influenza varies considerably from one season to the next (some years it is much lower than the range you claim). More importantly, our healthcare system has to "deal with" far more patients than just those who die each year. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html If data exist to show how many flu patients who also require hospitalization also require ventilators (health care workers wear respirators, patients (some) require mechanical ventilators), I am unaware of it. But I am confident about the following:
1. Flu patients didn't all go to the hospital during the same 2-3 month period, as, during the initial surge, happens with COVID-19.
2. The health care providers who treated those patients had been vaccinated for influenza, which provided substantial protection against their becoming infected by their patients, unlike COVID-19, for which there is no vaccine.
3. There has existed proven, FDA-approved treatment for the most common strains of flu (unlike for COVID-19).
4. Flu, while transmissible, has a shorter incubation period and becomes symptomatic earlier in the disease course, than COVID-19, which is why flu has a lower Rnaught than COVID-19, making flu much less contagious than COVID-19, and thus less of a threat to infect health care providers and other members of the public.
5. Flu spreads far slower, and less broadly, than does COVID-19, which spreads rapidly and insidiously.
6. Point of care testing for flu has existed and is widely used, enabling rapid diagnosis and identification of infected people. Such testing for COVID-19 has not existed, resulting in delays in diagnosis, positive identification, and quarantine measures, exacerbating spread.
7. Mortality rates from flu are about 0.1%, while COVID-19 mortality has been estimated at 2-3%, but hopefully will be lower in the U.S (currently about 1.9%). So, mortality of COVID-19 is, so far, generally estimated to be 10-20 times greater than flu.
8. Flu has never (in recent years) caused a complete overwhelming of our health care system. COVID-19 could, in some areas, and especially if aggressive mitigation measures are not taken.
9. Flu has never resulted in mass rationing of health care that would be necessary to save patients' lives. COVID-19 threatens to do so, which, if it were otherwise preventable, nearly all Americans (except a few numbers people) would find repulsive, contrary to their sense of morality, and unacceptable.
10. Flu has never presented the level of risk to treating health care workers that COVID-19 does. Large numbers of doctors in Italy have died (unverified report yesterday said over 60). Health care workers are humans, have families, and (for those who care only about statistics) take many years to replace when they suddenly disappear from the workforce.
11. Flu has never presented the level of risk to society generally, including the general work force, that COVID-19 does (far higher risk of morbidity; 10x-20x higher mortality), especially until there is an effective vaccine.
12. Flu disease burden on the health care system does not disappear just because there is an outbreak of COVID-19. COVID-19 outbreak adds to the disease burden of flu. The health care system is not prepared for this added burden either in terms of equipment such as personal protective equipment (masks, shields, gowns), clinical equipment (ventilators), or facilities (ICU beds), or in terms of skilled professionals (ICU doctors, infectious disease doctors, ICU nurses, respiratory therapists). Hospitals can't afford to have hundreds of ICU beds just sitting around waiting for a pandemic that requires additional ICU beds and staff to attend them.
Last edited by cmm3rd on Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Are some people more important than others?
<<Were the 2,945 people who died from COVID-19 a lot more important the other 747,000 people who have died in America this year?>> --Dan
As I've said before, from the epidemiologists' prospective, "2945" is a deceptively naïve number. Potentially an epidemic means unlimited deaths. Dan's quarrel Is with epidemiological models & science.
As I've said before, from the epidemiologists' prospective, "2945" is a deceptively naïve number. Potentially an epidemic means unlimited deaths. Dan's quarrel Is with epidemiological models & science.
Re: Are some people more important than others?
I guess my real questions are:
If roughly 3,000,000 die each year in the USA, didn't most of them go to the hospital to die? If another 100,000 or even 200,000 die this year from COVID-19 is it going to overwhelm the healthcare system?
Last night I saw a stat that roughly 20% of the Confirmed Cases of COVID-19 are hospitalized today. They showed a number under 23,000 that are hospitalized in the USA for COVID-19. People who test positive but have mild symptoms must be sent home. Where else would they go? If family members care for them, don't those people get the virus?
We have a lot of hospitals in America: https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals The stats at that website are from 2018, so today we have over 6,200 hospitals and roughly 1,000,000 staffed hospital beds.
I realize the economy is not totally shut down, but lots of businesses can't survive these extended lockdowns. My fear is that the victims from poverty might be worse than the victims from the virus.
Cure or no cure, eventually don't we have to move on?
Good news: FDA authorizes widespread use of the anti-malarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat coronavirus, saying possible benefit outweighs risk
Millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine will be distributed to hospitals across the country to try to slow the disease. ALWAYS CONSULT A DOCTOR BEFORE TAKING A DRUG LIKE THIS.
Patients with existing heart problems or taking certain drugs, such as anti-depressants that affect heart rhythm, are at risk of a fatal episode. Experts recommend screening before the drugs are prescribed to prevent drug-related deaths.
Long-term use of the drugs also is associated with a chance of developing a form of vision loss called retinopathy, but the use of the drugs to fight virus in an infected patient is only for a few days.
The FDA’s emergency authorization does not cover longer-term use of the drugs to prevent the coronavirus infection, although doctors have been prescribing the drugs “off label'' for weeks in response to the pandemic.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." --Sir Winston Churchill
If roughly 3,000,000 die each year in the USA, didn't most of them go to the hospital to die? If another 100,000 or even 200,000 die this year from COVID-19 is it going to overwhelm the healthcare system?
Last night I saw a stat that roughly 20% of the Confirmed Cases of COVID-19 are hospitalized today. They showed a number under 23,000 that are hospitalized in the USA for COVID-19. People who test positive but have mild symptoms must be sent home. Where else would they go? If family members care for them, don't those people get the virus?
We have a lot of hospitals in America: https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals The stats at that website are from 2018, so today we have over 6,200 hospitals and roughly 1,000,000 staffed hospital beds.
I realize the economy is not totally shut down, but lots of businesses can't survive these extended lockdowns. My fear is that the victims from poverty might be worse than the victims from the virus.
Cure or no cure, eventually don't we have to move on?
Good news: FDA authorizes widespread use of the anti-malarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat coronavirus, saying possible benefit outweighs risk
Millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine will be distributed to hospitals across the country to try to slow the disease. ALWAYS CONSULT A DOCTOR BEFORE TAKING A DRUG LIKE THIS.
Patients with existing heart problems or taking certain drugs, such as anti-depressants that affect heart rhythm, are at risk of a fatal episode. Experts recommend screening before the drugs are prescribed to prevent drug-related deaths.
Long-term use of the drugs also is associated with a chance of developing a form of vision loss called retinopathy, but the use of the drugs to fight virus in an infected patient is only for a few days.
The FDA’s emergency authorization does not cover longer-term use of the drugs to prevent the coronavirus infection, although doctors have been prescribing the drugs “off label'' for weeks in response to the pandemic.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." --Sir Winston Churchill
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
Energy Prospectus Group
Re: Are some people more important than others?
Watch the interview with Steve Moore at this link. It will help you understand my FEAR.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/step ... 0102i85mu6
Death is bad and all will face it. Susan's father died at 72 after weeks on a respirator. It sucked. We have buried our other three parents in the last three years.
We are now known as Mimi and Grandan to three little girls, we are up next. In my opinion, living in FEAR or living in POVERTY is not "living".
President Trump has a tough job. Love him or hate him, he is a tough guy and not afraid to make tough decisions. I think he sees clearly what Steve Moore is talking about.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/step ... 0102i85mu6
Death is bad and all will face it. Susan's father died at 72 after weeks on a respirator. It sucked. We have buried our other three parents in the last three years.
We are now known as Mimi and Grandan to three little girls, we are up next. In my opinion, living in FEAR or living in POVERTY is not "living".
President Trump has a tough job. Love him or hate him, he is a tough guy and not afraid to make tough decisions. I think he sees clearly what Steve Moore is talking about.
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
Energy Prospectus Group
Re: Are some people more important than others?
I guess my real questions are:
Are you implying that the questions you posed at the beginning of this thread, and that I spent a lot of time answering, weren't "real" questions? My answers, together with my previous posts on this subject, were "real" answers. Your understanding would be enhanced if you would carefully read them.
If roughly 3,000,000 die each year in the USA, didn't most of them go to the hospital to die?
I don't have time to look up US mortality statistics and where they occur, but a large number of deaths (I would guess maybe more than half) occur outside of hospitals (nursing homes, hospice, home). But your asking the question (again) is bafflingly irrelevant to the issues that drive policy response decisions for COVID-19. Patients don't "go to the hospital to die." They go for medical care for whatever illness they might have at the time. The vast majority walk out.
If another 100,000 or even 200,000 die this year from COVID-19 is it going to overwhelm the healthcare system?
Obviously you did not read, with any degree of care, what I have taken time to explain multiple times after you have asked similar questions (e.g., "our healthcare system has to "deal with" far more patients than just those who die each year.") The number of deaths in (or out of) hospitals does not reflect the burden on our healthcare system. Patients who present to hospitals, for any reason, comprise the total burden. When you add a large number, with a new, rapidly spreading, highly contagious, and (for 2%, if care is available to all) fatal disease, for which there is neither a cure nor a vaccine (prevention), on top of all other existing diseases, and then that large number presents during a "surge" (a compressed time period, like over the last 3 weeks has occurred in NYC (last two weeks in New Orleans), both of which cities were late in starting/enforcing aggressive mitigation, the number of deaths tells only 2% of the story. The other 98% are patients who are treated, some admitted, and all ultimately discharged.
I can see now why you failed to mention in your podcast the concept of flattening the curve, what it is, why it's critical, where we are in trying to do so, etc. I don't see how you could have been listening/reading and still miss its significance. Rather than explain it again for the third+ time, I suggest you go back and read some of my posts. For example, reread the New Orleans community hospital ER MD's post that I quoted describing what was happening at his hospital (and its parent) last week. (And be glad you are not in New Orleans should you need medical care.)
And if you don't trust the doctors who are in the trenches, read what their colleagues and public health officials are saying now to the rest of the country. Essentially, the message is "Don't wait for COVID-19 to come to you before you start getting prepared. COVID-19 is coming, and if you wait, it will be too late, like it was/is for NYC." The NYC Health Commissioner in Jan/Feb was minimizing COVID-19, and now the health care system there is straining. Field hospitals in Central Park? Do you want to be directed to a field hospital (tent) in Hermann Park when/if you get infected and have trouble breathing because we all went back to work and by doing so spread COVID-19 such that we cause a surge of patients that overwhelms our local hospitals?
Cure or no cure, eventually don't we have to move on?
"Move on" implies just abandoning or forgetting about an issue. That would be disastrous, wishful thinking in the context of COVID-19. COVID-19 would ravage our country if we didn't, instead, act intelligently. We will, of course, get through it. But we have to think about how we do so and what happens next. We can't stop this until we have a vaccine, which won't be until 2021. What do we do until the bulk of our population can be vaccinated?
Herd immunity won't happen before then, according to the epidemiologists, because that would require that about 2/3 of our population have been infected over the next 9+ months, or over 200 million infections, leading to an undetermined (but exceedingly large) number of hospitalizations (on top of all other hospitalizations) during that time span. We don't have nearly enough doctors, nurses or beds to provide that amount of care; so care would have to be rationed.
Instead, policy-makers are choosing to mitigate spread by social distancing, et al. Unfortunately, that strategy is poorly informed because of a lack of information as to who is infected and thus a vector for more spread. That problem is being addressed through rapid development of technology to test on a mass (and rapid) scale. It is hoped that within weeks we will have better information as to who is infected, or has been infected (antibody testing), so that we can identify who needs to quarantine, who needs to distance, and who is likely immune (at least for awhile) following having been infected and thus does not need to social distance. Results of mass testing, along with data showing that transmission is slowing, will allow public health officials to determine when, where, and to what degree we can start easing current mitigation restrictions.
Or, as you have been advocating, we can "move on," go back to work, not mitigate, and let COVID-19 run its course. The best minds say that would quickly overwhelm our healthcare system, lose a significant number of our doctors and nurses to infection, require denial of care to thousands if not tens of thousands of very sick people, would result in 1-2 million additional deaths (many of whom would be our seniors and senior leaders) from just COVID-19 in a relatively short time span, and would experience all the consequences of such. I don't know any large country in which a significant proportion of the people want that. And those large countries who tried that quickly changed their minds, though too late too avoid major consequences.
Are you implying that the questions you posed at the beginning of this thread, and that I spent a lot of time answering, weren't "real" questions? My answers, together with my previous posts on this subject, were "real" answers. Your understanding would be enhanced if you would carefully read them.
If roughly 3,000,000 die each year in the USA, didn't most of them go to the hospital to die?
I don't have time to look up US mortality statistics and where they occur, but a large number of deaths (I would guess maybe more than half) occur outside of hospitals (nursing homes, hospice, home). But your asking the question (again) is bafflingly irrelevant to the issues that drive policy response decisions for COVID-19. Patients don't "go to the hospital to die." They go for medical care for whatever illness they might have at the time. The vast majority walk out.
If another 100,000 or even 200,000 die this year from COVID-19 is it going to overwhelm the healthcare system?
Obviously you did not read, with any degree of care, what I have taken time to explain multiple times after you have asked similar questions (e.g., "our healthcare system has to "deal with" far more patients than just those who die each year.") The number of deaths in (or out of) hospitals does not reflect the burden on our healthcare system. Patients who present to hospitals, for any reason, comprise the total burden. When you add a large number, with a new, rapidly spreading, highly contagious, and (for 2%, if care is available to all) fatal disease, for which there is neither a cure nor a vaccine (prevention), on top of all other existing diseases, and then that large number presents during a "surge" (a compressed time period, like over the last 3 weeks has occurred in NYC (last two weeks in New Orleans), both of which cities were late in starting/enforcing aggressive mitigation, the number of deaths tells only 2% of the story. The other 98% are patients who are treated, some admitted, and all ultimately discharged.
I can see now why you failed to mention in your podcast the concept of flattening the curve, what it is, why it's critical, where we are in trying to do so, etc. I don't see how you could have been listening/reading and still miss its significance. Rather than explain it again for the third+ time, I suggest you go back and read some of my posts. For example, reread the New Orleans community hospital ER MD's post that I quoted describing what was happening at his hospital (and its parent) last week. (And be glad you are not in New Orleans should you need medical care.)
And if you don't trust the doctors who are in the trenches, read what their colleagues and public health officials are saying now to the rest of the country. Essentially, the message is "Don't wait for COVID-19 to come to you before you start getting prepared. COVID-19 is coming, and if you wait, it will be too late, like it was/is for NYC." The NYC Health Commissioner in Jan/Feb was minimizing COVID-19, and now the health care system there is straining. Field hospitals in Central Park? Do you want to be directed to a field hospital (tent) in Hermann Park when/if you get infected and have trouble breathing because we all went back to work and by doing so spread COVID-19 such that we cause a surge of patients that overwhelms our local hospitals?
Cure or no cure, eventually don't we have to move on?
"Move on" implies just abandoning or forgetting about an issue. That would be disastrous, wishful thinking in the context of COVID-19. COVID-19 would ravage our country if we didn't, instead, act intelligently. We will, of course, get through it. But we have to think about how we do so and what happens next. We can't stop this until we have a vaccine, which won't be until 2021. What do we do until the bulk of our population can be vaccinated?
Herd immunity won't happen before then, according to the epidemiologists, because that would require that about 2/3 of our population have been infected over the next 9+ months, or over 200 million infections, leading to an undetermined (but exceedingly large) number of hospitalizations (on top of all other hospitalizations) during that time span. We don't have nearly enough doctors, nurses or beds to provide that amount of care; so care would have to be rationed.
Instead, policy-makers are choosing to mitigate spread by social distancing, et al. Unfortunately, that strategy is poorly informed because of a lack of information as to who is infected and thus a vector for more spread. That problem is being addressed through rapid development of technology to test on a mass (and rapid) scale. It is hoped that within weeks we will have better information as to who is infected, or has been infected (antibody testing), so that we can identify who needs to quarantine, who needs to distance, and who is likely immune (at least for awhile) following having been infected and thus does not need to social distance. Results of mass testing, along with data showing that transmission is slowing, will allow public health officials to determine when, where, and to what degree we can start easing current mitigation restrictions.
Or, as you have been advocating, we can "move on," go back to work, not mitigate, and let COVID-19 run its course. The best minds say that would quickly overwhelm our healthcare system, lose a significant number of our doctors and nurses to infection, require denial of care to thousands if not tens of thousands of very sick people, would result in 1-2 million additional deaths (many of whom would be our seniors and senior leaders) from just COVID-19 in a relatively short time span, and would experience all the consequences of such. I don't know any large country in which a significant proportion of the people want that. And those large countries who tried that quickly changed their minds, though too late too avoid major consequences.
Re: Are some people more important than others?
Pray harder and hope God has mercy on us. It will be interesting to see how things work out in China since Wuhan is the only area still in lockdown and it expected to lift the lockdown next week.
COVID-19 deaths are approximately 2.85% of the total humans that have died this year. It has been drifting higher.
New York + New Jersey now account for more than 50% of Confirmed Cases and more than than 50% of the deaths in the USA.
Maybe we are just healthier in Texas, but my hope is that hot weather lowers the spread.
Texas had 3,344 cases and 49 deaths as of 4PM this afternoon per this website: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-in ... e-by-state
COVID-19 deaths are approximately 2.85% of the total humans that have died this year. It has been drifting higher.
New York + New Jersey now account for more than 50% of Confirmed Cases and more than than 50% of the deaths in the USA.
Maybe we are just healthier in Texas, but my hope is that hot weather lowers the spread.
Texas had 3,344 cases and 49 deaths as of 4PM this afternoon per this website: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-in ... e-by-state
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
Energy Prospectus Group