A figure we need to know…
…is the percentage of COVID-19 deaths that involve very debilitated people in nursing homes.
Some states are releasing those numbers, although even then they tend to not be easily accessible – for example, Minnesota, which Scott Johnson of Powerline writes about here:
One had to stay tuned in to the briefing’s last few minutes for data I can find nowhere else. Of the 160 deaths to date in Minnesota, 113 are associated with long-term residential care.
That’s over two-thirds. And how many of the rest are people who don’t just have one of the listed co-morbidities – some of which are very common – but are people who have many extremely serious health problems although they are not in facilities?
We need to know, in order to evaluate our own risks as states slowly start to open up.
As a person over sixty myself, with one very common pre-existing condition, I live a basically normal life and would like to go back to it ASAP. But if my risks are high, I will desist. I’d like the tools to know, at least statistically speaking, how high my risks might really be. I know that each case and each person is different, and even young healthy people can be killed by this nasty virus, but figures can help gauge relative risk and I want the right to look at them.
If anyone can find overall figures on this, or something that indicates a lot of states are releasing that information and what it is, please let me know. But in the absence of the availability of such information, I can’t help but suspect that the government powers that be fear that if we knew the true figures we might get too sanguine about the whole thing and defy their orders.
I don’t think I would. I’m a naturally cautious person. But I think we all have a right to know at this point, because by now the health authorities have gathered enough information to give us some valid statistics on it.
[ADDENDUM: I was in a hurry when I wrote this post, and I meant to add – but neglected to add – that an even more important figure for us to know would be the death rate and case fatality rate (two different things) for people in each decade of life, and in particular the death rate and case fatality rate for people in each decade of life with each pre-existing condition and also with various combinations of them.
Plus, I’ve written before about another thing I really really want to know. Without it, those charts of pre-existing conditions are meaingless:
Yes, the disease kills a lot of very debilitated extremely elderly people in nursing homes, the same group that has a high death rate every year from “ordinary” seasonal flu. But COVID also seems to kill younger old people in fairly high numbers, and those with rather common pre-existing conditions such as obesity, asthma, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension.
At least, that’s what we’ve been led to believe so far. But it’s not easy to get good statistics. For example (and I’ve mentioned this before) a lot of people over 60 have one or even several of those conditions. Are we just talking about age being the real factor? Are people over 60 with those conditions dying in higher percentages than the frequency of the conditions in the general over-60 population?
For example, in this NY chart helpfully provided by reader “JFM,” it lists co-morbidities and their percentage in each age decade of COVID deaths. Seems helpful, at first glance. But without knowing what percentage of people with COVID (not deaths from COVID, but COVID cases) are in each decade to begin with – and therefore whether those with each co-morbid condition are more likely than people of the same age without it to die of the disease, and without being able to compare those figures to the percentage of people in each age group in the general population who also have that co-morbidity, the statistic is nearly meaningless.
Let’s just take people in their 70s. You can see from the “Fatalities by Age Group” chart that there have been 4070 COVID fatalities in NY who were in that decade of life. That is about 26% of the total fatalities in the state. But it would be helpful to know what percentage of the general NY population is in that age group.
Then, when you go to the chart titled “Top 10 Comorbidities by Age Group,” you can see that in that same decade the number of people dying of COVID who also have hypertension is 2,537. That would be about 62% of the total number of deaths of people in their 70s in NY. Sounds like an awful lot had hypertension, doesn’t it?
After a quick look for figures in the general population for that age group and hypertension, I came up with this, from US figures from 2013-2016:
Percent of noninstitutionalized persons with hypertension (measured high blood pressure and/or taking antihypertensive medication) (2013-2016)
Men aged 65-74: 61.1%
Men aged 75 and over: 67.4%
Women aged 65-74: 67.4%
Women aged 75 and over: 78.7%
See how high those figures are, as well? Based on that, it doesn’t seem to me that the figures for COVID deaths in that age group are higher than in the general population. And those general hypertension figures for people in approximately that age group are for noninstitutionalized people, whereas the COVID death figures include institutionalized people, whom one might imagine would be more likely to have at least one of the listed co-morbidities.
And that’s not even getting into the number of people with other pre-existing conditions as well. The NY chart provides no information on that. I added up all the figures for comorbidities among those in their 70s (quickly; hope I didn’t make an error) and got a figure of 8157, which is approximately twice the number of people in that age group who died of COVID. So obviously a lot of people who died of COVID in NY have more than one pre-existing condition.
This could all be expressed on the chart, because I am assuming the information exists, but that hasn’t been done. And yet that site is one of the very best I’ve seen.]
The quality of care in nursing homes can vary greatly and even in some of the best if a member of the family is not close enough to visit on a regular basis there can be some neglect from time to time when the staff is stretched thin. We have had first hand experience with a well run facility as our father lived out his last few years requiring constant care and almost daily family visits.
With good care and a well run staff most all nursing homes will have more shared germs than a large pre-k classroom of runny nose kids and we all know those are germ factories that build acquired immunities. Old folk in nursing homes probably don’t have the strength and time and therefore they are easy targets for this nasty Corvid-19. I wonder if the other bad virus strains in the past were worse for the older, infirm populations in care facilities?
IIRC the Seattle Times reported around a week ago that half the deaths in WA were in nursing homes — 300 out of 600-some at the time.
Found the link: Coronavirus killed hundreds at Washington state’s long-term care facilities. Widespread testing may finally be near.
Also:
[Emphasis added]
And by the way, [Gomer Pyle voice]: Surprise, surprise!
UW Medicine halts use of coronavirus testing kits airlifted from China after some had contamination
The exact data is not at Maricopa County (Phoenix, AZ metro area) Health Department site. They do state (as of 4/22) that 97% of the deaths to date are for people over 65 or have 1 or more chronic condition. Roughly 2/3 of the deaths are associated with the 65+ cohort.
For New York state see the “Top Ten Comorbidities by Age Group” here:
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n
“…89% out of 15,302 (89.0%) total fatalities have at least one comorbidity.”
A grand total of 27,623 comorbidities gets shared between 15,302 fatalities for an average of 2.02 comorbidities per fatality.
As for demographic breakdown, the WA Public Health site is very transparent, although I can’t find anything listing co-morbidities:
Confirmed Cases / Deaths by AgeAge Group % of Cases % of Deaths
0-19 3% 0%
20-39 28% 1%
40-59 34% 8%
60-79 24% 38%
80+ 10% 54%
Unknown 0% 0%
Here in NC, about 45% of deaths are in nursing homes and residential care facilities (that is, assisted living), according to data from WRAL.com.
My neighbor, a nurse at UNC Hospital, says these cases don’t come to her hospital. At the moment, among others, at UNC they have an Uber Eats driver, a grocery store worker, and a municipal bus driver. These are people who might have gotten a heavy virus exposure. Other patients are older, mostly.
The Mass.gov Covid-19 dashboard has some great info…..charts, graphs etc…..regarding age…etc. for example the average age of deaths in confirmed cases is 82…in Massachusetts …..confirmed deaths in long term care facilities 1205…..total deaths in Massachusetts 2182……etc information by race….97.8% of deaths had underlying conditions…..check it out.
This is the thing my family is grappling with in respect to my mom. She’s not in a nursing home but a residential facility that has tiers of care where some people like her are almost totally independent (or were before this) and others receive limited help with certain things like laundry and cleaning (for an added fee of course).
She lives in her own one bedroom apt but the place is locked down almost completely and they have had zero cases of the virus which is obviously good but what is the long term plan here? Is this lockdown going to continue indefinitely? She hasn’t had a visitor in her home since March 12 and has left the facility twice both for doctor visits ( which happened in the car in the parking lot).
At some point this becomes too much as she and others need some kind of human interaction. But what is that point. Needless to say we bat this question around daily.
It’s also pretty obvious that a high percentage of the deaths are in care facilities just by reading the descriptions in the reports.
It’s not uncommon for it to be ‘a male in his 90s with underlying conditions’ or a ‘female in her 80s with underlying conditions’ and have even seen a couple in the ‘100s’.
Of course not all people in their 80s or 90s are in care homes but it seems pretty obvious that a great deal of these deaths are people in these facilities.
Don’t know the answer to this one.
In Snohomish County they have a pretty good dashboard. Out of 98 deaths to date, 34 have come from nursing or assisted living facilities.
They have a bar chart of cases by ethnicity. Latinos, Native Americans, and Blacks have been hardest hit. Asians and Caucasians less so.
91 of the 98 deaths have had underlying conditions. They also have a bar chart showing the percentage of deaths by age.
Check it out here:
https://www.snohd.org/499/COVID-19-Case-Count-Info
Its also becoming harder to take the death totals seriously as there are more stories of the increasingly broad definition of COVID deaths because of the financial incentives of hospitals and local governments.
This entire thing may go down as the most impactful event in US history since the Civil War. More than both world wars.
I was told of a drug overdose death that was counted as due to COVID. I can only presume it was due to those financial incentives.
A relative also happened to know personally two people who have died of this. Both were elderly and in one case the family opted not to treat, I presume because of underlying conditions.
In short, I’m with Griffin.
To all:
Please take a look at the rather lengthy ADDENDUM I added to the post.
Re the Addendum: I don’t think we’re going to get enough data to let us do proper regressions or factor analysis or whatever the statistical techniques are called for at least a year and probably more. I suspect that it’s going to take some FOIA lawsuits to pry it out of governments as well.
For that matter, from incomplete death certificates signed by harried doctors to bureaucrats’ turf protection to politicians engaging in CYA, I don’t know if we’ll ever have proper data on this.
Don’t know about the long term impact.
This seems super important and harrowing and scary TO US because it’s happening TO US.
1/3 of Europe killed by the Black Plaque … kinda meh because it was so long ago. The Great Depression, well my parents and in-laws made it through … so not so bad.
My Father and Father-in-Law both served in WWII where people were actually trying to kill them. And our mothers were in the States worrying about their spouses to be and was there enough food and no gasoline and you couldn’t binge watch TV and no internet …
Again this seems MONSTROUS to US. I can’t imagine people in 2120 feeling much different about this than we do about the Spanish Flu in the 1920’s. It didn’t happen TO US so maybe it wasn’t so bad.
The past is, so to speak, a different country.
——
Sent from my iPad … excuse the errors please
J.J.:
Speaking of Snohomish County (northern neighbor of King County/Seattle for non-WA people), the Seattle Times reported that the county sheriff has refused to enforce Gov. Inslee’s stay-at-home order as unconstitutional.
This belies the usual Narrative that the noncomplying sheriffs are all Eastern Washington rednecks and benighted science-deniers.
Tuvea,
Yes, I chose the word ‘impactful’ because this entire ordeal is touching just about everybody while it’s likely that there were many people that had no direct impact from the world wars since they were not fought on the homeland. Also this thing is affecting almost every sector of life it is impossible to avoid it. They played MLB during the wars not now. Just one example.
So from a life and death count probably not but from a greater health, cultural and economic impact this is beyond huge. Which is why myself and some others have been so alarmed by these shutdowns and all the unintended consequences that they bring and we are starting to see pop up now.
And there will be lots of blame thrown around to those in positions of power and I can’t believe anybody could possibly think otherwise.
I have been tracking one of our provinces that provides cases and deaths by age groups. The numbers are a bit wonky as they don’t put the number of people but use a percentage. How you can get 167.72 cases is beyond my knowledge, but I plug the percentages into a spread sheet daily to keep track for myself. (it is wall of text, sorry. Anyone know if this comment section does tables?)
Quebec Case and Deaths age distribution (Apr 21)
Cases 20965
Deaths 1134
Read in 5 columns – age range, number of cases, number of deaths, survival %, fatality rate %
0-9 167.72 0.00 100.00% 0.00%
10-19 482.20 0.00 100.00% 0.00%
20-29 2327.12 0.00 100.00% 0.00%
30-39 2704.49 3.40 99.87% 0.13%
40-49 3417.30 5.67 99.83% 0.17%
50-59 3228.61 19.28 99.40% 0.60%
60-69 2138.43 78.25 96.34% 3.66%
70-79 1886.85 207.52 89.00% 11.00%
80-89 2704.49 474.01 82.47% 17.53%
90+ 1907.82 342.47 82.05% 17.95%
UK Age 0.00 UK age 4.54
Bryan, new guy…just elected last Nov. A sergeant up-from-the-ranks. More law-and-order type compared the the old sheriff he defeated. Ditched a bunch of touchy-feely processes of his predecessor immediately upon taking office in January.
FWIW, been out-and-about running pickups/dropoffs for my wife (masks) or riding the bike here in the Soviet, and haven’t been hassled at all. Even had a park ranger waive me onto the local trail despite it ‘in theory’ being closed.
Looking at all these comments, and data from around here, I think we simply don’t have what Neo is asking for. What underlying conditions, or what combinations thereof, are most likely to result in death from COVID-19? This information doesn’t seem to be available, not now.
Also not available, without much further research, is why black Americans seem to succumb more often than other groups. Recessive sickle cell gene? Looking around me, I don’t see that the obvious case of obesity is necessarily more prevalent in that group than others, except that I don’t see very many obese Americans of Asian descent.
Soviet:
Good for Snohomish! Would that we in King County could elect someone other than the current useless waste of oxygen we have as a sheriff.
To follow up on my comment above, I’ve seen a lot of people here and there posting to the effect of “it looks like social distancing has flattened the curve on the usual seasonal flu as well”. I don’t think that’s clear at all: with the dearth of tests and so many people being diagnosed with CV just on symptoms, it’s obvious that a lot of flu deaths are being misclassified as CV.
I think we’re going to have to wait a year and then look at the “US deaths from all causes” chart to find excess deaths, and use that as a basis for how awful the pandemic really was and at the same time how effective the lockdowns were.
Norman: Actually, as Arizona is one of several states I’m tracking, I can confirm exactly how many deaths in Maricopa County (aka Phoenix) were from long-term care: 56, to be exact, out of 97 in the county. Maricopa County has a somewhat useful set of data.
F King Jay has responded to Franklin County (WA) decision to allow businesses to reopen by saying they are defying the “law” and putting people’s health at risk! Fines and civil penalties for businesses that defy the King will follow.
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/coronavirus/article242203441.html
The above local rag is carrying water for King Jay BTW.
Thx, KyndyllG. So that would be about 80% of those over 65 who have passed. That would then lead to the inference the overall risk from just being over 65 would be similar to those in the 50-65 cohort.
om,
This is all going to start falling apart on King Jay. Between the people in the Tri-Cities and the Snohomish county sheriff there are beginning to be cracks in the wall for Dear Leader. I’ve been waiting for you folks in eastern Washington to rise up and pushback. Was talking to someone today who thought the tipping point on the west side will be that first stretch of warm May weather we get every year. People will be out ‘breaking the law’ like crazy. It gets damn hot with one of those masks on in 80 plus degree temps.
The same will start happening elsewhere if they don’t start loosening the grip.
Kate:
I don’t know exactly how it tracks with the COVID data, but there is plenty of data indicating that black people in the US have higher rates of many of the co-morbidities than people of other races do. For example, black people have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and hypertension. If you want to take a look, here’s a summary. There’s a ton of information out there on the topic.
Griffin,
Ahhh … now I understand why you used the word ‘impactful’.
An excellent response with which I can certainly agree.
Sorry if I came across as a little harsh.
And as a lifelong baseball ( Cubs ) fan I too lament the loss of what would be a superb distraction.
Tuvea,
No worries. I think WW2 may be above this because of the loss of life on two fronts and it all coming on the heels of the Great Depression. I guess the real unknown with this is how long are we dealing with the virus and then the economic fallout which can’t just be erased and then you have the long term ramifications from all the gross violations of our civil liberties. Once those in power do something like this once it is much easier to do it the next time.
I like to check the Worldometer site for US –
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
If you look at the source column on the right side, they usually have a link to the state department of health page. The quality of information varies by state but each state seems to be improving the information they are gathering. Some states are starting to show a graph of cases by the date of first symptom, not when the test was reported. I hope that the states are starting to collect health data.
I live in Oklahoma – https://coronavirus.health.ok.gov/ and the site keeps changing. But, I can find out cases, deaths, and recoveries by zipcode, city, county. The age, gender, race numbers are also graphed.
On a different page, there is a pdf published 5 days/week with more detail. Here is today’s report
https://coronavirus.health.ok.gov/sites/g/files/gmc786/f/eo_-_covid-19_report_-_4-22-20.pdf
With respect to comorbidity – 65.9% of deceased cases had at least one comorbidity (diabetes, heart disease or circulatory disease, chronic lung disease, liver disease, or renal failure). The final section of the report lists the long-term care facility information, by county and by facility. So, there have been 63 deaths linked to the facility – 37% of total deaths. And there were 597 patient & staff cases or 20% of the OK total cases.
We have lost all perspective in this panic. Even if there was no coronavirus, over 8,000 Americans would have died today of some other cause. 8,000 would die tomorrow, too, and the day after, and day after. Around 3 million will die this calender year if there had been no coronavirus. Just under 1% of the population died every year this past decade, and that rate will rise over the next decade as the population continues to age.
Yancey,
Nonsense. Nobody has ever died of anything before the Coronavirus and if we all stay shut in no one will ever die again.
“But in the absence of the availability of such information, I can’t help but suspect that the government powers that be fear that if we knew the true figures we might get too sanguine about the whole thing and defy their orders.” – Neo
https://babylonbee.com/news/vicious-tyrant-trump-wants-to-let-people-leave-their-homes
https://babylonbee.com/news/kentucky-orders-all-churchgoers-to-wear-yellow-cross
https://babylonbee.com/news/infographic-common-covid-19-talking-points-and-what-they-actually-mean
I came across this today, and it’s too good not to share.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/idiotic-possibly-unconstitutional-order-houston-police-officers-union-blasts-liberal-county-judge-imposing-draconian-mask-order/?ff_source=Twitter&ff_campaign=websitesharingbuttons
jimmyslippers • 9 minutes ago
I generally don’t copy and paste, but I found this comment from another website far too good not to share. Hat tip ISA41:10.
Well good news! A friend has broken down all the facts and everything we need to know about COVID-19!
1. Basically, you can’t leave the house for any reason, but if you have to, then you can.
2. Masks are useless, but maybe you have to wear one, it can save you, it is useless, but maybe it is mandatory as well.
3. Stores are closed, except those that are open.
4. You should not go to hospitals unless you have to go there. Same applies to doctors, you should only go there in case of emergency, provided you are not too sick.
5. This virus is deadly but still not too scary, except that sometimes it actually leads to a global disaster.
6. Gloves won’t help, but they can still help.
7. Everyone needs to stay HOME, but it’s important to GO OUT.
8. There is no shortage of groceries in the supermarket, but there are many things missing when you go there in the evening, but not in the morning. Sometimes.
9. The virus has no effect on children except those it affects.
10. Animals are not affected, but there is still a cat that tested positive in Belgium in February when no one had been tested, plus a few tigers here and there…
11. You will have many symptoms when you are sick, but you can also get sick without symptoms, have symptoms without being sick, or be contagious without having symptoms.
12. In order not to get sick, you have to eat well and exercise, but eat whatever you have on hand and it’s better not to go out, well, but no…
13. It’s better to get some fresh air, but you get looked at very wrong when you get some fresh air, and most importantly, you don’t go to parks or walk. But don’t sit down, except that you can do that now if you are old, but not for too long or if you are pregnant (but not too old).
14. You can’t go to retirement homes, but you have to take care of the elderly and bring food and medication.
15. If you are sick, you can’t go out, but you can go to the pharmacy.
16. You can get restaurant food delivered to the house, which may have been prepared by people who didn’t wear masks or gloves. But you have to have your groceries decontaminated outside for 3 hours. Pizza too?
17. Every disturbing article or disturbing interview starts with “I don’t want to trigger panic, but…”
18. You can’t see your older mother or grandmother, but you can take a taxi and meet an older taxi driver.
19. You can walk around with a friend but not with your family if they don’t live under the same roof.
20. You are safe if you maintain the appropriate social distance, but you can’t go out with friends or strangers at the safe social distance.
21. The virus remains active on different surfaces for two hours, no, four, no, six, no, we didn’t say hours, maybe days? But it takes a damp environment. Oh no, not necessarily.
22. The virus stays in the air — well no, or yes, maybe, especially in a closed room, in one hour a sick person can infect ten, so if it falls, all our children were already infected at school before it was closed. But remember, if you stay at the recommended social distance, however in certain circumstances you should maintain a greater distance, which, studies show, the virus can travel further, maybe.
23. We count the number of deaths but we don’t know how many people are infected as we have only tested so far those who were “almost dead” to find out if that’s what they will die of…
24. We have no treatment, except that there may be one that apparently is not dangerous unless you take too much (which is the case with all medications). Orange man bad.
25. We should stay locked up until the virus disappears, but it will only disappear if we achieve collective immunity, so when it circulates… but we must no longer be locked up for that?
There are also some other things we need to know, and it’s getting very confusing trying to find what actually has happened in several areas.
I’m just going to throw out some links, because the titles illustrate the problems.
First off, is HCQ useful, or not? The VA “study” seemed to say the latter, but the media was possibly spinning out some gold from straw.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2020/04/22/veterans-affairs-secretary-shares-some-key-details-about-that-hcq-study-the-media-is-obsessing-over-n2567406
https://pjmedia.com/trending/five-problems-with-the-study-that-claims-more-deaths-from-treating-coronavirus-with-hydroxychloroquine/
Why we don’t have good data.
First, check out Sergey’s link from the “Immigration” thread –
Sergey on April 22, 2020 at 2:49 pm said:
Neo, here is a really good article quite understandable even for people with zero knowledge or taste for mathematics:
https://peterattiamd.com/covid-19-whats-wrong-with-the-models/
* * *
Then look at these:
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/04/20/heres-didnt-coronavirus-testing-february/
“It’s true that February could have been a moment to ramp up testing in order to see more clearly how quickly the virus was spreading and it’s true that didn’t happen. Why it didn’t happen is another matter.
Over the weekend the Washington Post published a deep dive on the problems at the Centers for Disease Control which cost the U.S. about a month of progress.”
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/04/22/antibody-study-la-county/
“The problem, as Marshall points out is that this low death rate Dr. Bhattacharya arrives at doesn’t seem possible when you look at the actual death toll in New York:”
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/04/22/first-u-s-coronavirus-death-happened-weeks-earlier-previously-thought/
“But it turns out that was not accurate. Santa Clara County announced today that it had identified three deaths linked to the virus, two of which happened before February 29. In fact, the first newly identified death happened on February 6th, more than three weeks before the death in Washington state which America was told was the first of its kind:”
https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/04/22/welp-sweden-withdraws-study-suggesting-one-third-stockholms-population-may-infected/
“Everyone makes mistakes, but I’m curious to see if the error involved something obvious, like the 1,000-to-one ratio, which would force a correction because the public is already aware of it or if it’s something more subtle, in which case withdrawing the study to get it right would be a show of good faith. If it turns out that this particular mistake just so happened to make Sweden’s “herd immunity” strategy appear more effective than the data supports, that confirmation bias will make it harder to trust them going forward.”
We need to know lots of figures, because NYC is going totally bonkers.
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/04/22/new-yorks-frightening-new-not-resuscitate-guidelines-cardiac-patients/
“Under new guidelines issued by the state Health Department, paramedics finding people in a state of cardiac arrest without a heartbeat are not supposed to go through the usual routines of attempting to restart the patient’s heart and respiration. In other words, assuming you are seen by an EMT who is following this guideline, once you’re dead you’re supposed to politely remain on your trip to the afterlife.”
And when you’ve lost Idaho….
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/04/22/idaho-mother/
The Idaho Statesman reports that Sara Walton Brady, 40, of Meridian was arrested — and handcuffed — for allowing her children to play on climbing equipment at a town park.
A press release issued by the Meridian Police Department said, “officers responded after several calls were made to dispatch, and then informed those gathered that the playground structure was closed and that they were welcome to utilize open areas of the park.” Families were asked to leave the area. Brady “was noncompliant and refused to leave after being given many opportunities, so she was arrested on one count of misdemeanor trespassing.”
We need to know lots of figures, because NYC is going totally bonkers.
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/04/22/new-yorks-frightening-new-not-resuscitate-guidelines-cardiac-patients/
“Under new guidelines issued by the state Health Department, paramedics finding people in a state of cardiac arrest without a heartbeat are not supposed to go through the usual routines of attempting to restart the patient’s heart and respiration. In other words, assuming you are seen by an EMT who is following this guideline, once you’re dead you’re supposed to politely remain on your trip to the afterlife.”
And when you’ve lost Idaho….
https://www.theblaze.com/news/arrest-of-idaho-mother-at-closed-playground-with-her-children-sparks-protest
[note to Neo – I initially tried to link a post at RedState, but the mods rejected it in numerous guises; is that a forbidden website for some reason I’ve missed?]
This link may be of some use.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765184
Morning update: Good news in that we’ve now had 9 straight days of “serious cases” flat lined (pardon the morbid pun). And even though I know it’s cumulative, NY active cases has shown a plateau for the last 3 days. My nearby to NY home state of CT is still 5-6 days out from peaking in active minus recovered. Looks like Gov. Lamont won’t be letting us out anytime soon. And in the bad news, though for just one state, NH has moved away from the Gaussian curve downside and begun an upswing. My friend in NH called me two days ago and said from his confidential sources he was hearing this and did I see it in the data. Now I do, so it looks like the state is releasing data about two days later.
I very much hope the Georgia experiment goes well. I’m SO tired fo this. We all need to get back out. If in two weeks the Georgia experiment fails, then the all the governors will have an excuse to keep this going indefinitely and the country WILL collapse from economic ruin and social chaos.
Neo, yes, I knew black underlying causes run higher. I am wondering if there’s also some genetic susceptibility. We won’t know that for a long time.
AesopFan, even the VA is stating that their study on hydroxychloroquine is not definitive. They gave it to gravely ill veterans in the hospital. Apparently all the patients were black males. Doctors treating COVID with HCQ generally state that it’s more effective if given early in the infection. Those who, sadly, died in the VA study were already suffering severe damage. HCQ is not a drug of last resort.
I wish the FDA would get its act together and approve Remdesivir more widely. It appears to be saving some of the people who could not be saved at the VA.
Thanks for that link, Sharon W. It’s helpful. I need to go through the tables linked. However, it seems that the primary co-morbidity trouble is diabetes. Hypertension may be linked to diabetes, and of course hypertension is common among obese patients.
(I hope your husband is home.)
RE: An earlier thread where we were discussing Chinese Coronavirus statistics, and how they were identified, counted/tabulated.
Linked below is this recent report, about how a San Jose, California female who was in her late 50s, generally healthy, and with no “history of significant travel,” in late January supposedly contracted the “flu,” was “unusually sick” and was recovering, but then died very suddenly on February 6th, 2020.
After the fact, however, I presume it was her tissue samples which tested positive for the Coronavirus.
This finding making her the first and earliest Chinese Coronavirus death in the U.S., indicating that the virus might have been in circulation far earlier than has been thought.
Reading the whole story through, it was originally thought that she had died from a heart attack.
So, which was her “primary cause of death,” the heart attack, or the Chinese Coronavirus?
See https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/san-jose-woman-57-was-first-confirmed-coronavirus-death-in-us/
, I can’t help but suspect that the government powers that be fear that if we knew the true figures we might get too sanguine about the whole thing and defy their orders.
Either they don’t want us to know, or more likely they don’t understand the basics of statistics, conditional probability, cross-tabulations. As you point out, deaths by age group is not a helpful statistic unless you know population by age group. There are a lot more people in their 50s than in their 80s. Then we want to know within each age group, a breakdown by co-morbidities. Separate breakdowns by age group, and by co-morbidities are not so helpful because the two are highly correlated. In other words, a matrix rather than a column (age group x co-morbidity), with figures on a per capita basis within each age group.
Just saw a new report that doctors are finding that the Chinese Coronavirus is causing otherwise healthy people in their 30s and 40s to have strokes.
It does seem like this extremely infectious Chinese Cornavirus can attack practically all major organs.
Snow on Pine:
It does seem to cause a loss of critical thinking, news media most seriously affected, organs of the CCP such as CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NYT, WA Post ….
You are right that part of what is driving the reluctance to release that data by some of those withholding it, has been their desire that some “segements” of the population NOT begin to feel, or realize, that they are not as vulnerable or at equal risk, and therefore start to chafe even more at across the board restrictions.
Others have stated they don’t want to further burden the nursing homes with stigma and hardship.
It’s difficult to know if these idiots believe what they are saying, or not. Though I have no doubt that they would justify almost anything, i.e. the subversion of the health and welfare of the “advantaged”, in the name of their vision of “equity”, and “solidarity” and social justice.
It’s just part of their termite nature.
om–This is a report from the WaPo, after all, but this does seem to be a rather alarming collection of reports, that there is increasing evidence that, in addition to the Chinese Coronavirus attacking all sorts of major organs, is also causes so far unexplained, life threatening blood clotting problems.
See https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/22/coronavirus-blood-clots/
The goal is to shape the perception, as DNW has pointed out, that this disease is a unique, unprecedented, world altering threat to the Earth (oops that is Climate Change). Worse than smallpox, polio, TB, Ebola, even worse than AIDS! Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
The only way to stop it is to nuke it from orbit (well that hasn’t been suggested yet).
their desire that some “segements” of the population NOT begin to feel, or realize, that they are not as vulnerable or at equal risk
Very reminiscent of the AIDS hoax, that people other than homosexuals and IV drug users were going to be significantly affected. Any cases outside of those groups got disproportionate attention by the media, even though some turned out to be not what they’d appeared to be. Which is not to say there’s no risk for those who are healthy and under 55, just that it’s likely tiny, especially if we consider how many have had the virus without realizing it.
Related front-page article in WSJ this morning (behind paywall): “Covid-19 Toll Tops 10,000 at Care Facilities.” Flu reported at more than 4800 facilities; states report statistics differently; federal government does not report deaths at nursing facilities.
Separately, Cuomo reports 21 percent of New Yorkers randomly surveiled tested positive for Covid antibodies, indicating support for Stanford/USC relatively low mortality rates.
Here’s two numbers everyone on the right currently breaking their arms from patting themselves on the back needs to know:
CDC says as of April 21, the U.S. had an estimated 44,575 dead from coronavirus. That’s with ?5,862 “probable” deaths, so at least over 38,000.
The Bloomberg coronavirus map puts the death toll as of 1 pm on April 23 at 47,147.
Those numbers are WITH the most severe disease mitigation efforts any of us have ever seen and we are, at best, no more than a little past the peak of this thing. Which means those numbers doubling or going up by another 50% are not out of the question.
Yet a bunch of conservative half-wits are running around doing victory dances and proclaiming this was all just a big hoax designed to kill the economy and destroy our freedoms.
It’s almost enough to hope Trump does lose in November.
Mike
Bear in mind this – from an article on The Atlantic:
If it turns out that, say, 20 percent of the U.S. has been infected, that would mean the coronavirus is more transmissible but less deadly than scientists think. It would also mean that a reasonable proportion of the country has some immunity. If that proportion could be slowly and safely raised to the level necessary for herd immunity—60 to 80 percent, depending on the virus’s transmissibility—the U.S. might not need to wait for a vaccine. However, if just 1 to 5 percent of the population has been infected—the range that many researchers think is likelier—that would mean “this is a truly devastating virus, and we have built up no real population immunity,” said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist at Harvard. “Then we’re in dire straits in terms of how to move forward.”
Who is “proclaiming this was all just a big hoax?” I haven’t seen anyone who denies the deaths which have occurred. The question was always about what the actual fatality rate will be for the country’s population. There’s no question that people are dying from this, and with it.
The problem of underlying conditions could provide a useful path to estimating the efficacy of hydroxychlorquinoline as a treatment for COVID-19.
For quite a few years, hydroxychloroquinoline has been used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. This group of people could be treated as a sample population. What fraction of the sample was infected with the SARSCoV2 virus, and how did they fare when compared to those outside the sample?
As far as I know, no one is pursuing this line of research, but it’s hard to be sure. Someone could be working on it, but there’s not yet been any publication of results.
I recently read someone else propose this idea, but I can’t remember where I read it. Apologies to whomever that was.
Good idea, Cornflour, and I hope someone does that study.
Another link on the NY study. 88% of the hospitalized patients had two or more comorbidities:
https://disrn.com/news/nearly-all-new-york-coronavirus-patients-had-underlying-conditions-study-finds
When Montage is more reasonable than MBunge dogs and cats are truly living together.
Mike, tells us again how everywhere is just like New York City.
This is bringing out the latent concern trolls.
I am a little mystified by the arguments that some are making.
First, the only comparable Pandemic/Epidemic experience we’ve faced in modern centuries would seem to be the Spanish Flu of 1917-18, which, according to one estimate, killed 650,000 people here in the U.S., with a world-wide death toll ranging from 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 deaths.
This, admittedly at a time, back in 1917-18, when our world and the U.S. were much different, when U.S. population was very much lower (roughly 103,000,000 vs. today’s 335,000,000), when our medical knowledge and capabilities then vs. today’s were primitive—for example, nowhere near today’s knowledge about the human body and disease processes, no antibiotics or antivirals, no routine Xrays or CAT scans, no ventilators, no computational power, not even a clue about DNA–and when we had far fewer overall resources then than we do now.
So, I don’t know just how many of the lessons of the Spanish Flu might be applicable to our current Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic.
Then, of course–in the case of the present day’s Chinese Coronavirus–we had the Chinese Communist Party taking deliberate and multi-pronged steps to cover up the occurrence, source, date, lethality, and the seriousness of the initial outbreak, and—apparently even to this day—the real number of those Chinese sickened and dying from this virus.
As we are finding out, by very bitter and costly experience–the key pieces of information we needed about what appears to be an extremely communicable, and lethal disease, a virus which attacks many different organs and body systems, with many of those gravely ill surviving it apparently looking forward to lingering or perhaps even to permanent damage and disabilities–so that we could have had a much better chance of effectively containing it at it’s outset, and more chance of limiting the disability, death, and destruction it would cause.
So, by what they did and said China made sure that we were—that all the other countries in the world were–behind the eight ball from the get go; their actions prevented us from being able to get in early in the virus’ spread and contain/stop it.
Then, later on, the WHO got into the act, delayed our responses even further with their parroting of Chinese Communist disinformation about the Coronavirus—early on announcing to the world that it was not that big a problem, later that it was not even communicable from one person to the other.
How were our leaders to deal with this unprecedented situation?
Well, one way was to look to Epidemiologists, Medical professionals, and other supposed “experts” for models that would hopefully give them some ideas, and proposed steps to take–what would happen if the virus was allowed to spread unhindered—to run its course–and, alternatively, what would happen if leaders took certain steps to try to reduce the virus’ spread, and lower the number of those sickened and dying from this virus.
As we’ve discovered, these theoretical models were/are not anywhere perfect, and can often be wrong, be way, way off—especially until these models can be filled out with some actual and accurate vs. theoretical data, which the Chinese deliberately did not supply to us.
It seems to me that the central message is that–if you wanted to reduce the number of those infected, made sick, acutely, gravely ill, and dying from this illness, then, some steps had to be taken to slow the geographic spread of the virus, and people to people contacts.
Because, otherwise, the Chinese Coronavirus would progress at such a rate–in a matter of days and weeks doubling and then doubling again–would generate so many infected, then sick and dying people–who would need enormous numbers of professional medical personnel, care givers, and huge amounts of initially scarce resources, that it would overwhelm and eventually crush our health care system, leading to untold misery, destruction—familial, social, and economic–and even more likely preventable deaths.
So, some course had to be set, decisions had to be made, and in the U.S—after consulting Medical professionals and other experts–President Trump made those decisions.
Was he right in what he did, and is doing?
The problem is that, we can never know for certain what would have happened, in our particular country, with our particular geography, our particular Federal system of government, and other particular situations—how many gravely ill, how many deaths there would have been, how much total damage–had he chosen, for instance, not to order a “lockdown,” but to let the Chinese Coronavirus “run its course,” or taken some intermediate course, something less than a lockdown.
Thus, it is unfair, in my view, to criticize President Trump by saying that–if he had just taken a different course, done this instead of that, not done this but did do that–that this would have lessened the death and destruction.
Because no one can really know for sure.
MBunge:
You might want to link to some of those conservative half-wits, so people know what you’re talking about.
Also, wanting Democrats to be elected as a result is a rather odd response.
Snow on Pine:
COVID-19 is not unique in having the effect you discuss here. Several other viruses can increase the risk of stroke. It’s just not widely known or publicized.
Everything about COVID is being publicized as though it’s uniquely able to cause things. Each virus is unique, of course, but some of these supposedly unique characteristics of COVID are not actually so unique.
For example, the cytokine storm with COVID. It’s a terrible terrible thing. But when flu kills (including H1N1), that’s one of the common ways it kills. How many people know that? How many knew that in 2009-2010, when H1N1 was going round – and 80% of its victims were under 65, by the way?
It’s the only way to be sure …
https://youtu.be/nnHmUk_J6xQ
om,
That’s awesome. The Bill Paxton character is all the corona bros out there freaking out and the Paul Reiser character is the lonely guy out here saying wait a minute here and I guess Ripley is how Cuomo sees himself.
It is going to take some time to sort out just how dangerous covid19 is in “normal” terms.
We have in this country an enormous population of people seemingly ok at a glance, who are in fact chronically ill, medically maintiained, or otherwise suffering from health pathologies.
With a population so heavily freighted with preexisting pathology, how is one to assess the risk to the normally healthy, given that abnormality has become the de facto norm?
Yet by any standard it is a major public health crisis; and I for one would like to see what the projected death rates would be if ICU care and ventilators [I acknowledge the questions regarding their efficacy] were not available.
I know that many have argued that the flu is as great a killer, but until I see data indicating the same kinds hospital overloads in the recent past from flu, I won’t be convinced. Frankly I think that the whole issue of flu here is a distraction and a kind of red herring in terms of assessing comparative “Social costs”.
What might turn out to be true though, is that the American population has become so comparatively debilitated that a virus which wpuld not have harmed many in the late 1950s, even though tbey had no more immunity to covid19 then than we do now, is causing a pandemic today.
Now, and as regards the flu, if we ever discover that lots of healthy young people with no immunity to a certain strain of flu, do contract it, yet feel no effects, but still pass it on to others, that will change the way I think about this matter: as I have been assuming that any healthy person infected by a flu virus with which he has no immunity, will feel its effects.
What if that assumption were not true for flu, anymore than it is (we are told) for Covid19?
I think one reason the hospitals are perceived to be overloaded and health workers so exhausted is because they’re using the maximum amount of PPE, which is a hassle to put on and take off and hard to function in and difficult to manage.
Whereas with flu doctors and nurses wear at most a mask and wash their hands before and after examining you. So you could have flu patients stacked on gurneys in hallways and health workers would be slammed but not exhausted.
At yesterday’s WH Coronavirus Task Force briefing some interesting and promising initial results of experiments by DHS’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center were presented.
Their testing showed that on “hard surfaces” the “half-life” of the Chinese Coronavirus was greatly reduced at high temperatures vs. low, in high humidity vs. low, and that it was very dramatically reduced when exposed to sunlight.
The killing effects of sunlight on the Chinese Coronavirus were also observed when the virus was in aerosol form.
What I took from this was that summer temperatures and high humidity—especially in the South–may greatly reduce transmission of the virus, and that–to the greatest extent possible–we should spend time outside in the sunlight and not cooped up inside.
Below find an article laying out these findings which, of course, includes the obligatory ridicule of President Trump and his ideas.
See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8252701/Coronavirus-dies-SUNLIGHT-just-minutes-reveals-striking-study.html
Question:
Does anybody yet have figures based on actuarial tables, giving us the 1-year and 5-year life expectancies of persons with all these comorbidities?
And, does anybody yet have the 1-year and 5-year life expectancies of persons in a growing economy, versus a contracting one? Or employed persons versus out-of-work persons?
I’m asking for life expectancy analyses, because if the data is available, I think comparing reduced life expectancies is the right way to decide whether to “open up” or stay “shut down.”
Here’s why: SARS-CoV-2 is a very fast-spreading virus, with an asymptomatic-but-contagious period. Consequently, I’ve been assuming since mid-February that, within 5 years, every single solitary human in the United States will have been exposed to the virus at least once. Only people who live permanently in quarantine will be able to avoid it.
And, I’ve also been assuming we would not impoverish the whole world by keeping everyone permanently in quarantine. We’re gonna open sometime.
Operating under those two assumptions, I came to this conclusion: The effect of shelter-in-place is all about death-timing: If an obese asthmatic 85-year-old gets it, they will die of it. All we’re doing by shutting down the country is changing when that happens.
If it happens so quickly that all the multiple-comorbidity folks die in a few months, then you flood the hospitals and extra people die because the medical system is overburdened. We don’t want that; so, some shutdown is warranted: Enough to ensure the medical system doesn’t break down.
But, once that’s ensured, how much more shutdown do we want?
I suggest we compare these two things:
– drop in 5-year life expectancy of everyone suffering economic damage (including many people being unemployed)
– drop in 5-year life expectancy of everyone getting COVID-19
We could, for example, say something like this:
“In our state, 4 months shutdown was sufficient to ensure the medical system didn’t crash. For each additional month beyond that, our population of 10 million persons experiences GDP shrinkage of 3%, which produces an average 3-month reduction in 5-year life expectancy…and, unemployment goes to 30%, which produces an average 5-month reduction in 5-year life expectancy. So that’s 10 million reductions of 3 months, plus 3 million reductions of 5 months, for a total of 30 million + 15 million months, or 45 months total.
“Meanwhile, we’ve broken our 10 million citizens into 10 bands of COVID-19 mortality levels. Weighting each band according to their numbers, we find that COVID-19 reduces 5-year life expectancy by an average of 1 month if we’re social-distancing, and 4 months if we’re not social-distancing. So that’s 40 million months if we’re not social-distancing.
“Comparing 45 million months to 40 million, we find that the shutdown is causing even more early deaths than COVID-19 would if we weren’t shut down. And most of the COVID-19 risk is focused in the 70-and-up population. So, our best course is to quarantine only the 70-and-up folks, and compel work-from-home for all their caretakers. Everyone else should get back to work.”
Caveat: I’m aware we’re probably missing the data necessary to confidently calculate those numbers.
Here’s what I’m asking: If the data can be acquired, is this the correct way to analyze our decision? Are my criteria (lost life expectancies) the correct criteria?
Or is there some reason why we should make our shutdown/open-up decisions in a different way?
R.C.:
I can’t assist you with finding the actuarial data.
But I have to mention that the idea of continuing the shutdown (and I think it’s time to end it, by the way) is that in just a couple of months we will have better treatments and a better understanding of the virus. Better treatments would definitely change the outcomes, even if the same number of people contract the illness. That is the difference, although the costs may be too great in economic and other ways.
Also, although the timing of a vaccine is iffy, there is a possibility of fast-tracking so that perhaps next winter one will be available. That could be a game-changer.