1. While I believe it would be impossible to separate those that died WITH Covid from those that died FROM Covid, it would be interesting to look at trends in places like New York in regards to causes of death.
2. I wonder about this because the military sent the USNS Comfort to NYC to serve has a 1000 bed hospital for non-Covid patients. It has been there over a week now and the last I heard, they had less than 50 patients sent to the ship. In a city the size of NYC and with the emergency they claim they are experiencing leading to a lack of suitable hospital bed space, you would expect that the hospital ship would have filled to capacity rather quickly. It didn't.
3. So what I would like to see is something that compares the avg number of patients admitted and resulting deaths from Heart disease, renal issues, etc. prior to the Covid outbreak and what those numbers look like during the outbreak. I have a suspicion that the numbers of people that died from other ailments would be greatly reduced during this Covid outbreak. But without those numbers, we have no idea.
And that is my point. Is there a significant increase in deaths due solely to Covid or are people that have died during this outbreak that would have normally been coded as dying from other ailments, now all being attributed to Covid?
4. I was listening to a doctor on some news show saying that when a patient on Medicare gets admitted to the hospital with Covid, the hospital is reimbursed at a higher rate than they otherwise would be. When those same people are put on a vent, the reimbursement is even greater. That sure looks like an incentive to code anyone and everyone possible as a Covid patient.
5. But to reiterate, I am NOT trying to say that ignoring Covid or not taking precautions is not the right thing to do. As someone that would be highly susceptible to severe complications from this virus, I understand the importance of doing what is needed to avoid being infected. But I also believe that killing our economy in the process is going to be even worse than the consequences of the virus. I also believe that when the crisis is over, we will look back and see that this virus was not much worse than a typical influenza outbreak.
Knowing that we see these types of things come around every couple of years or so (Swine flu, H1N1, Ebola, SARs, MERS, etc) are we going to start shutting down our economy every time it happens? That could get ugly fast.
I numbered the stuff above to make the response a bit clearer
1. If you think this is impossible, then naming any cause of death is sort of meaningless. You could die with AIDS, but you'll never die FROM AIDS, none the less, lots of people contracting it would be an issue. And if COD has no meaning when it comes to anything with a slightly systemic element, then most deaths will just be listed as "a lot of things."
2. As I read, there were a bunch of bureaucratic issues with the boat, issues with admitting, policies, hospital to hospital transfer. I believe it was reported ambulances couldn't just roll up to the thing with fresh patents for some reasons.
3. It would be interesting to have that chart of overall deaths to look for a jump. Unsure if that data is tabulated live. I found some data from 2017 that about 7,700 people die a day. So the napkin math would get interesting there.
4. Who was the doctor and what was the news show? I would certianly allow for the idea that there might be some weird incentives. But if you assume lots of hospital systems are overhyping a global pandemic for profit, it would be weird to turn around and trust any doctor and hospital. And as a man who would be susceptible, I assume you trust some medical folks. (If this were the case, I can’t imagine some chunk of the medical community wouldn’t speak out super loudly. I know in my area, the hospitals are taking some level of a hit because everything elective, i.e. a lot of money makers, are all on hold)
5. You’re telling me you have some high-end comorbidities, and that it is important to not get it, but if you got it and things went south, it likely wouldn’t be because of the disease? (referring back to No. 1) Anyway, it seems like this is a process of believing this is overblown and looking for reasons that’s the case. The level of skepticism toward something saying it could be so serious is raised to levels that are almost unreachable. And that’s fine, but it might end with a high level of skepticism toward the little bits of evidence that support the idea it’s overblown.
This also underplays the effect on the economy if it is in fact bad. If we let it roll super unchecked, our hospitals would get pretty hammered, as they’re close to that already. And if you know you can get sick, and you see images of people on cots lining a hospital hallway, you’re not trying to congregate. So in the end, you’re only talking about the degree the economy gets hit, not if it takes a large hit.
If it turns out to be not much worse than the normal flu run, that’ll be great. It’ll mean the death count at the end is considerably below the average flu season (as insane precautions have been taken). And if that’s the case, then we won’t do this again going forward. (Ebola is not in the same class as those other diseases, as it is much harder to contract and worlds more virulent. It seems as if this particular virus spreads much more rapidly than those others)
