New Covid-19 Thread

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

As I suspected would happen and posted somewhere earlier in this thread, the much publicized Lancet study damning the efficacy of hydrochloroquine FAILED to use ZINC.

Zinc is the "heavy lifter" that kills Covid-19. Hydrochloroquine and azithromycin only help to deliver the zinc to where it can do its work. If the body doesn't have enough zinc to work with, those drugs alone are useless.

But zinc is dirt cheap and can't be patented. Hydrochloroquine and azithromycin are dirt cheap as well. There's no profit in this for Big Pharma. Just as scurvy is a deficiency disease of Vitamin C, I submit that flu in most cases is a deficiency disease of Vitamin D. Covid-19 is a deficiency disease of zinc, and cardiomyopathy complications from Covid-19 are a deficiency disease of selenium.

Blood work would tell us if I'm right or not, but that isn't on the agenda.

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/0...w1siANtOr2PQhM

UPMC doctor says COVID-19 has become ‘less prevalent’ and isn’t making people as sick

Updated Jun 05, 6:41 AM; Posted Jun 04, 1:24 PM

By David Wenner | dwenner@pennlive.com


Fewer people are testing positive for COVID-19 and those who test positive don’t seem to be getting as sick, a UPMC doctor said Thursday.

“All signs that we have available right now show that this virus is less prevalent than it was weeks ago,” said Dr. Donald Yealy, the chair of emergency medicine at UPMC.
Yealy further said, among people who test positive, “the total amount of the virus the patient has is much less than in the earlier stages of the pandemic.”

RELATED: UPMC doctor argues COVID-19 not as deadly as feared, says its hospitals will shift back to normal
The proportion of people with COVID-19 getting so sick they need a breathing ventilator has fallen, according to Yealy.
“We see all of this as evidence that COVID-19 cases are less severe than when this first started,” he said.

Yealy said those observations apply to western and central Pennsylvania along with communities in New York and Maryland served by UPMC.
He said UPMC has so far conducted about 30,000 coronavirus tests, with less than 4% showing positive. He further said UPMC has tested about 8,000 patients who had no symptoms, with those patients testing positive at a rate of about 1 in 400.

He said that suggests the widely-feared prospect of getting COVID-19 from someone with no symptoms is unlikely. However, that assessment is based on the likelihood of encountering someone who is COVID-19 positive but doesn’t know it. It doesn’t address the likelihood of catching COVID-19 from someone who actually has it but doesn’t feel sick.
“Your risk of getting into a car accident if you go back and forth across the turnpike in Pennsylvania is greater than your risk of being positive for asymptomatic COVID-19 infection,” he said. “This should give you some reassurance that the risk of catching COVID-19 … from someone who doesn’t even know they have the infection, in our communities, is very small.”

Yealy said he doesn’t know exactly why the prevalence and severity of COVID-19 seems to have fallen. He said it likely reflects an interplay of things including weather, possible genetic changes in the virus, people watching themselves more closely for symptoms, and better medical decisions and treatment.

UPMC hospitals have discharged about 500 people who had been hospitalized with COVID-19, Yealy said. They are presently treating about 100.

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN2370OQ

New coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says

ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.

“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion.

“The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television.
WHO and other experts say no evidence of coronavirus losing potency

Italy has the third highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth highest global tally of cases at 233,019.

However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent.

Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality.

“We’ve got to get back to being a normal country,” he said. “Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country.”

The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory.

“Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians,” Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement.
A lifeguard wearing a protective face mask takes the temperature of a woman at a newly reopened beach after months of closure due to an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Punta Hidalgo, in Punta Ala, Italy May 31, 2020. REUTERS/Jennifer Lorenzini

“We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks.”

A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken.

“The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today,” said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.

“It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different.”

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Its taken all the "Low hanging fruit".................

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

I emailed the above two links to several friends with the simple comment, "Doctors from Italy and Pennsylvania reporting that Covid-19 appears to be weakening."

My libertarian and conservative friends replied with comments like "That's interesting" or "That's good news."

My liberal Democrat friends responded with fear. One wrote:

"Interesting, but I am afraid people here will read this and think we are out of the woods. This is not the case. There are already so many people who refuse to wear masks, which I feel is a disrespect to others. We don’t need people letting their guard down and relaxing their precautions because of what they are reading is happening in other countries. Italy lost tens of thousands of people before COVID-19 allegedly began to wane. It is good to be hopeful, but I believe too many people are being foolish instead."

She is so fearful, she would have censorship if she could.

Same stimulus, such different responses.

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Don't want a date with her!

[jk]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

a less potent mutated version of the virus would have a selective advantage over a more potent one. i.e. if the virus were immediately lethal it wouldn't have a chance to spread to other hosts. otoh if it were very contagious but totally benign we'd all have it and not care. so perhaps there is a new, less dangerous strain which is displacing the earlier one. that would be a gift.

i hope it's true. i am beginning to resign myself to the possibility that i will never see my children or grandchildren again except on a computer or phone screen. [i'm in ct while my family is in southern california and the uk, so it's 3000 miles either way]

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

a less potent mutated version of the virus would have a selective advantage over a more potent one. i.e. if the virus were immediately lethal it wouldn't have a chance to spread to other hosts. otoh if it were very contagious but totally benign we'd all have it and not care. so perhaps there is a new, less dangerous strain which is displacing the earlier one. that would be a gift.

That's what I'm thinking.

i hope it's true. i am beginning to resign myself to the possibility that i will never see my children or grandchildren again except on a computer or phone screen. [i'm in ct while my family is in southern california and the uk, so it's 3000 miles either way]

I hope you get to be with your family again, jk.

[Down Under]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

i hope it's true. i am beginning to resign myself to the possibility that i will never see my children or grandchildren again except on a computer or phone screen. [i'm in ct while my family is in southern california and the uk, so it's 3000 miles either way]

Hey jk,

I'm sure you'll get to see your children and grandchildren again, face to face.

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/b...s-ceo-pay.html

Hospitals Got Bailouts and Furloughed Thousands While Paying C.E.O.s Millions
June 8, 2020

HCA Healthcare is one of the world’s wealthiest hospital chains. It earned more than $7 billion in profits over the past two years. It is worth $36 billion. It paid its chief executive $26 million in 2019.

But as the coronavirus swept the country, employees at HCA repeatedly complained that the company was not providing adequate protective gear to nurses, medical technicians and cleaning staff. Last month, HCA executives warned that they would lay off thousands of nurses if they didn’t agree to wage freezes and other concessions.

A few weeks earlier, HCA had received about $1 billion in bailout funds from the federal government, part of an effort to stabilize hospitals during the pandemic.

HCA is among a long list of deep-pocketed health care companies that have received billions of dollars in taxpayer funds but are laying off or cutting the pay of tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and lower-paid workers. Many have continued to pay their top executives millions, although some executives have taken modest pay cuts.

The New York Times analyzed tax and securities filings by 60 of the country’s largest hospital chains, which have received a total of more than $15 billion in emergency funds through the economic stimulus package in the federal CARES Act.

The hospitals — including publicly traded juggernauts like HCA and Tenet Healthcare, elite nonprofits like the Mayo Clinic, and regional chains with thousands of beds and billions in cash — are collectively sitting on tens of billions of dollars of cash reserves that are supposed to help them weather an unanticipated storm. They awarded their five highest-paid officials about $874 million in the most recent year for which they have disclosed their finances.

At least 36 of those hospital chains have laid off, furloughed or reduced the pay of employees as they try to save money during the pandemic.

Industry officials argue that furloughs and pay reductions allow hospitals to keep providing essential services at a time when the pandemic has gutted their revenue.
But more than a dozen workers at the wealthy hospitals said in interviews that their employers had put the heaviest financial burdens on front-line staff, including low-paid cafeteria workers, janitors and nursing assistants. They said pay cuts and furloughs made it even harder for members of the medical staff to do their jobs, forcing them to treat more patients in less time.

Even before the coronavirus swept America, forcing hospitals to stop providing lucrative nonessential surgery and other services, many smaller hospitals were on the financial brink. In March, lawmakers sought to address that with a vast federal economic stimulus package that included $175 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to hand out in grants to hospitals.

But the formulas to determine how much money hospitals receive were based largely on their revenue, not their financial needs. As a result, hospitals serving wealthier patients have received far more funding than those that treat low-income patients, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
One of the bailout’s goals was to avoid job losses in health care, said Zack Cooper, an associate professor of health policy and economics at Yale University who is a critic of the formulas used to determine the payouts. “However, when you see hospitals laying off or furloughing staff, it’s pretty good evidence the way they designed the policy is not optimal,” he added.

The Mayo Clinic, with more than eight months of cash in reserve, received about $170 million in bailout funds, according to data compiled by Good Jobs First, which researches government subsidies of companies. The Mayo Clinic is furloughing or reducing the working hours of about 23,000 employees, according to a spokeswoman, who was among those who went on furlough. A second spokeswoman said that Mayo Clinic executives have had their pay cut.

Seven chains that together received more than $1.5 billion in bailout funds — Trinity Health, Beaumont Health and the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan; SSM Health and Mercy in St. Louis; Fairview Health in Minneapolis; and Prisma Health in South Carolina — have furloughed or laid off more than 30,000 workers, according to company officials and local news reports.

The bailout money, which hospitals received from the Health and Human Services Department without having to apply for it, came with few strings attached.
Katherine McKeogh, a department spokeswoman, said it “encourages providers to use these funds to maintain delivery capacity by paying and protecting doctors, nurses and other health care workers.” The legislation restricts hospitals’ ability to use the bailout funds to pay top executives, although it doesn’t stop recipients from continuing to award large bonuses.

The hospitals generally declined to comment on how much they are paying their top executives this year, although they have reported previous years’ compensation in public filings. But some hospitals furloughing front-line staff or cutting their salaries have trumpeted their top executives’ decisions to take voluntary pay cuts or to contribute portions of their salary to help their employees.

The for-profit hospital giant Tenet Healthcare, which has received $345 million in taxpayer assistance since April, has furloughed roughly 11,000 workers, citing the financial pressures from the pandemic. The company’s chief executive, Ron Rittenmeyer, told analysts in May that he would donate half of his salary for six months to a fund set up to assist those furloughed workers.

But Mr. Rittenmeyer’s salary last year was a small fraction of his $24 million pay package, which consists largely of stock options and bonuses, securities filings show. In total, he will wind up donating roughly $375,000 to the fund — equivalent to about 1.5 percent of his total pay last year.
A Tenet spokeswoman declined to comment on the precise figures.

The chief executive at HCA, Samuel Hazen, has donated two months of his salary to a fund to help HCA’s workers. Based on his pay last year, that donation would amount to about $237,000 — or less than 1 percent — of his $26 million compensation.

“The leadership cadre of these organizations are going to need to make sacrifices that are commensurate with the sacrifices of their work force, not token sacrifices,” said Jeff Goldsmith, the president of Health Futures, an industry consulting firm.

Many large nonprofit hospital chains also pay their senior executives well into the millions of dollars a year.
Dr. Rod Hochman, the chief executive of the Providence Health System, for instance, was paid more than $10 million in 2018, the most recent year for which records are available. Providence received at least $509 million in federal bailout funds.

A spokeswoman, Melissa Tizon, said Dr. Hochman would take a voluntary pay cut of 50 percent for the rest of 2020. But that applies only to his base salary, which in 2018 was less than 20 percent of his total compensation.

Some of Providence’s physicians and nurses have been told to prepare for pay cuts of at least 10 percent beginning in July. That includes employees treating coronavirus patients.

Stanford University’s health system collected more than $100 million in federal bailout grants, adding to its pile of $2.4 billion of cash that it can use for any purpose.
Stanford is temporarily cutting the hours of nursing staff, nursing assistants, janitorial workers and others at its two hospitals. Julie Greicius, a spokeswoman for Stanford, said the reduction in hours was intended “to keep everyone employed and our staff at full wages with benefits intact.”

Ms. Greicius said David Entwistle, the chief executive of Stanford’s health system, had the choice of reducing his pay by 20 percent or taking time off, and chose to reduce his working hours but “is maintaining his earning level by using paid time off.” In 2018, the latest year for which Stanford has disclosed his compensation, Mr. Entwistle earned about $2.8 million. Ms. Greicius said the majority of employees made the same choice as Mr. Entwistle.

HCA’s $1 billion in federal grants appears to make it the largest beneficiary of health care bailout funds. But its medical workers have a long list of complaints about what they see as penny-pinching practices.

Since the pandemic began, medical workers at 19 HCA hospitals have filed complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about the lack of respirator masks and being forced to reuse medical gowns, according to copies of the complaints reviewed by The Times.

Ed Fishbough, an HCA spokesman, said that despite a global shortage of masks and other protective gear, the company had “provided appropriate P.P.E., including a universal masking policy implemented in March requiring all staff in all areas to wear masks, including N95s, in line with C.D.C. guidance.”

Celia Yap-Banago, a nurse at an HCA hospital in Kansas City, Mo., died from the virus in April, a month after her colleagues complained to OSHA that she had to treat a patient without wearing protective gear. The next month, Rosa Luna, who cleaned patient rooms at HCA’s hospital in Riverside, Calif., also died of the virus; her colleagues had warned executives in emails that workers, especially those cleaning hospital rooms, weren’t provided proper masks.

Around the time of Ms. Luna’s death, HCA executives delivered a warning to officials at the Service Employees International Union and National Nurses United, which represent many HCA employees. The company would lay off up to 10 percent of their members, unless the unionized workers amended their contracts to incorporate wage freezes and the elimination of company contributions to workers’ retirement plans, among other concessions.

Nurses responded by staging protests in front of more than a dozen HCA hospitals.

“We don’t work in a jelly bean factory, where it’s OK if we make a blue jelly bean instead of a red one,” said Kathy Montanino, a nurse treating Covid-19 patients at HCA’s Riverside hospital. “We are dealing with people’s lives, and this company puts their profits over patients and their staff.”

Mr. Fishbough, the spokesman, said HCA “has not laid off or furloughed a single caregiver due to the pandemic.” He said the company had been paying medical workers 70 percent of their base pay, even if they were not working. Mr. Fishbough said that executives had taken pay cuts, but that the unions had refused to take similar steps.

“While we hope to continue to avoid layoffs, the unions’ decisions have made that more difficultfor our facilities that are unionized,” he said. The dispute continues.
Apparently anticipating a strike, a unit of HCA recently created “a new line of business focused on staffing strike-related labor shortages,” according to an email that an HCA recruiter sent to nurses.

The email, reviewed by The Times, said nurses who joined the venture would earn more than they did in their current jobs: up to $980 per shift, plus a $150 “Show Up” bonus and a continental breakfast.

[jk]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

they run them like businesses. isn't that THE AMERICAN WAY?

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

they run them like businesses. isn't that THE AMERICAN WAY?

The American Way is Socialism for the rich, Capitalism for everyone else. People in my office won't even read this article because it's from the Communist NY Times. But they are incensed about the moral hazard created by $600/week unemployment benefits.

I give up.

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

What "Contact Tracing" really means (Hint: It ain't about controlling a virus). If you don't have time to watch anything else, make time to watch this:

Because I refuse to own a smart phone (pardon me, a TRACKING DEVICE), I fully expect to be barred from grocery stores, travel and who knows what else, but this is where I draw the line and say No More! As a sovereign human being I will NOT submit to this. I hope I won't be alone but if I am, so be it.

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Good find
The "App" can be "counter-measured" by some smart hackers, I smelt a RAT right from the start your recall

[Techdread]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

What "Contact Tracing" really means (Hint: It ain't about controlling a virus). If you don't have time to watch anything else, make time to watch this:

Because I refuse to own a smart phone (pardon me, a TRACKING DEVICE), I fully expect to be barred from grocery stores, travel and who knows what else, but this is where I draw the line and say No More! As a sovereign human being I will NOT submit to this. I hope I won't be alone but if I am, so be it.

I agree huge privacy concerns, and citizens should be watching the politicians so that they don't use these new technologies to oppress there populations.

But you are using a computer the amount of information that can be mined from this habit means you have lost your privacy already.....to any interested parties.

Privacy has been an illusion in the West for a long time, Credit Agencies (private companies by the way) have a huge influence on your life, not with-standing the Equifax breach.,
The Amazons, and the Google have great power of what you buy and even can influence how you think again private companies.

Yet your type harps on about being tracked by a smartphone APP, Nutz.