I think you and I are talking about different things. The only thing Sweden shows is that governments have limited control over the behavior of their citizens. I bet if you compared Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark you'd get roughly the same amounts of people wearing masks, going out, avoiding parties, avoiding travel, etc. Regardless of government mandates, similar groups of people are taking similar measures (or declining to take measures).

To go back to the flu and RSV example. Sweden is seeing historic low flu counts just like everywhere else. That means that Swedes are taking unprecedented precautions to prevent the spread of viral illness. If they were "business as usual" then we wouldn't see any impact on their flu cases this year.

This is what gets me about the "they are falsely counting flu deaths as covid deaths" crowds
Even if we were in the worst flu season of the last 20 years, and every flu deaths was counted as a covid death, the number of covid deaths is staggering. 4000 died yesterday. 4000 will probably die today. 4000 will probably die tomorrow. And we haven't come close to the peak.

Duncan Idaho said:

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This is what gets me about the "they are falsely counting flu deaths as covid deaths" crowds
Even if we were in the worst flu season of the last 20 years, and every flu deaths was counted as a covid death, the number of covid deaths is staggering. 4000 died yesterday. 4000 will probably die today. 4000 will probably die tomorrow. And we haven't come close to the peak.

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That and it's just wrong. Everyone I know is checking for the flu at the same time we check for COVID. Our most commonly used test checks for both. No one is testing positive for the flu, so we are not counting flu cases as anything. There just aren't any

There is no need to debate it because it is a completely moot point.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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These protocols are definitely not stopping it, but they're probably substantially slowing it down. No way to prove that either way though. So what's the difference with those and COVID? Why is COVID still spreading when these other respiratory viruses are not? In my mind, the continued spread of COVID lends more credence to the idea of asymptomatic spread. The time before symptoms with RSV and flu are both pretty short, and everyone is avoiding sick people. That alone could account for most of the flu and RSV drop with masks, distancing, and lockdowns doing the rest. Since the time before symptoms with COVID can be much longer, the basic "avoid sick people" strategy wouldn't work if asymptomatic spread is happening.

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The way I explain it to folks is like a wildfire. If firefighters are fighting a wildfire that's till spreading, would we say that the firefighters are useless and we should just stop fighting it? Even if the firefighters can't stop the fire, we use them to contain it, to allow people the time to evacuate, etc.

Right now we're trying to slow COVID so that the medical community and scientists can come up with ways to treat it and vaccinate, etc. Removing all restrictions because they aren't working perfectly would potentially be devastating.

First, I'm sorry to continue the derailing of the purpose of the thread. Watching the hospitalization censuses scream up across the country is shocking. In Houston, it does not feel like we are having an outbreak the way it did in the summer, perhaps due to the lack of new restrictions or the pre-occupation with other news events, but we are closing in on the same hospitalizatoin level of the summer peak and Phase 1 capacity has been exceeded again with Phase 2 capacity in sight.



But, I would just like to add to the conversation about government interventions and coronavirus. Clearly, they work -- many countries/areas have dramatically shifted their curves through harsh interventions of different levels. And it should be very easy to accept that when people are around each other less, the virus spreads less than otherwise.

However, government recommendations, edicts, etc. do not tell the whole story and trying to make it the sole independent variable of coronavirus growth is extremely short sighted.

We KNOW that coronavirus transmissibility is affected by:

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Whether an infected person is wearing a mask
• Whether the receiver is wearing a mask
• What cross-reactivity of antibodies someone has
• What viral load someone gets
• The density of population
• The average household size
• The cultural norms around touching and closeness
• Sanitation and cleanliness norms
• The types of jobs that people working in an area do -- what luxury they have to work from home or forced into exposure
• Whether people are yelling, singing, etc. around other people
• The trust in government and compliance with government recommendations
• What strain/mutation of coronavirus is present.

It's clear that in different areas of the world, those knobs are all turning different directions at different times. Government edicts can only go so far, especially when they are poorly adopted. I took a road trip over the winter to Chicago. During our drive through Arkansas, I would enter gas stations that said masks were required for entry and nobody, not even the employees were wearing masks or doing anything to social distance.

However, in Japan where there are relatively few restrictions, my colleagues approach work and each other with the utmost caution without being forced to by government. They explain that due to their population density, avoiding pandemics has been a way of life long before COVID. Even they just recently had to declare a State of Emergency in Tokyo and more people have for the first time being shifted to work from home.

But just because any single government restriction or mitigation method cannot stop the coronavirus alone does not mean that they are pointless and without merit.

HotardAg07 said:

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First, I'm sorry to continue the derailing of the purpose of the thread. Watching the hospitalization censuses scream up across the country is shocking. In Houston, it does not feel like we are having an outbreak the way it did in the summer, perhaps due to the lack of new restrictions or the pre-occupation with other news events, but we are closing in on the same hospitalizatoin level of the summer peak and Phase 1 capacity has been exceeded again with Phase 2 capacity in sight.



But, I would just like to add to the conversation about government interventions and coronavirus. Clearly, they work -- many countries/areas have dramatically shifted their curves through harsh interventions of different levels. And it should be very easy to accept that when people are around each other less, the virus spreads less than otherwise.

However, government recommendations, edicts, etc. do not tell the whole story and trying to make it the sole independent variable of coronavirus growth is extremely short sighted.

We KNOW that coronavirus transmissibility is affected by:

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Whether an infected person is wearing a mask
• Whether the receiver is wearing a mask
• What cross-reactivity of antibodies someone has
• What viral load someone gets
• The density of population
• The average household size
• The cultural norms around touching and closeness
• Sanitation and cleanliness norms
• The types of jobs that people working in an area do -- what luxury they have to work from home or forced into exposure
• Whether people are yelling, singing, etc. around other people
• The trust in government and compliance with government recommendations
• What strain/mutation of coronavirus is present.

It's clear that in different areas of the world, those knobs are all turning different directions at different times. Government edicts can only go so far, especially when they are poorly adopted. I took a road trip over the winter to Chicago. During our drive through Arkansas, I would enter gas stations that said masks were required for entry and nobody, not even the employees were wearing masks or doing anything to social distance.

However, in Japan where there are relatively few restrictions, my colleagues approach work and each other with the utmost caution without being forced to by government. They explain that due to their population density, avoiding pandemics has been a way of life long before COVID. Even they just recently had to declare a State of Emergency in Tokyo and more people have for the first time being shifted to work from home.

But just because any single government restriction or mitigation method cannot stop the coronavirus alone does not mean that they are pointless and without merit.

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Thank you. If only everyone could be so rational and nuanced.

One good thing about this round of hospitalizations is the number of hospital personnel who should be immune - through prior illness or vaccine. I'm hearing less employees are out for this round so better able to support the incoming patients, although in my area of Texas we have surpassed the July peak hospitalizations already. And shooting up still.

Ultimately because there are so many variables or "knobs", people don't have to actually alter their belief, they can just blame it on one of the other variables.

And that hold true for both sides.

It also doesn't help matters when the same basic theory applies to where we choose to receive our information and how we choose to interpret it. When a poster posts a picture of armed military in the UK with automatic weapons drawn to enforce masks on the subway, do I really want to believe the guy on Twitter he's getting his talking points from is in any way credible?

To reinforce the original post: We couldn't transfer a patient today to a higher level of care due to no beds available. We are going to manage them in house instead. Bed availability is definitely limited and has been for the last 2 weeks and doesn't look like it's changing anytime soon.

we 100% need field hospitals

it's ridiculous that they stood one up in Harris County back in April and we don't have one now

But the idea of a fire that our firefighters can't contain is too scary for me to handle. So i will cope by pretending it isn't that bad because most of the places that burn arent populated

we're going to be getting boosters for years for this thing

Duncan Idaho said:

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If you are talking timeline, I am going to guess At least 3 weeks out when the new years deaths hit. If the new strain doesn't modify behavior, it will be further out.


If you are talking daily death count, I am going to say we will hit at 6-7k a day before we start declining.

Like I said when I said we were going to loose 100,000s to this virus, I hope to God I am wrong.

I truly hope you can rightfully ttt this response and laugh at me

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Oh ok, so you were just stating your wild guess as fact. Neat.

No forward looking prediction can be called fact. They are all estimates.

Since you are so sure I am wrong, when do you think we peak?

GAC06 said:

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Duncan Idaho said:

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If you are talking timeline, I am going to guess At least 3 weeks out when the new years deaths hit. If the new strain doesn't modify behavior, it will be further out.


If you are talking daily death count, I am going to say we will hit at 6-7k a day before we start declining.

Like I said when I said we were going to loose 100,000s to this virus, I hope to God I am wrong.

I truly hope you can rightfully ttt this response and laugh at me

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Oh ok, so you were just stating your wild guess as fact. Neat.

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Not sure why we have to be so combative when we disagree with someone's opinion on here. 6-7k deaths/day is not really an unreasonable prediction given we are already at 4K and are continuing to rise, while cases continue to increase, as well.

cone said:

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we 100% need field hospitals

it's ridiculous that they stood one up in Harris County back in April and we don't have one now

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There was a decent amount of political fall out in some circles for wastefulness because many went unused, or minimally used.

I suspect no one wants to be responsible for setting up a field hospital in the chance that this situation calms down by the time it's set up.

This is actually one of the reasons why healthcare is expensive. Sometimes you have to take preemptive measures that cost money in order to be ready should things go south.

In that situation, the limiting factor will not be beds/equipment, but the human resources of people who can work in an ICU environment. If it were an isolated spike, as when NYC raged in the spring, people from across the country can go work temporarily. However, if the spike is across the country, those supplementary resources may not be available.