Unwind COVID Testing Psychology?

Florida Surgeon General Rolls Out New “Psychology-Based” COVID Testing Plan
https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/politics/desantis-fort-lau…

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If you encourage people to stop all the “low value” COVID testing, you’ll avoid detecting all the “low value” COVID infections.

Seems like a great way to “improve your COVID numbers”. If you test less, you detect less infection. COVID pandemic solved.

That’s why Florida is a “leader”.

intercst

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Catch 22 by “Heller”:

Peckem likes to think of himself as a superior intellect, and he does have some education, which should not be confused with wisdom. He quotes glibly from Nietzche, Montaigne, or Warren G. Harding and is especially pleased with himself for inventing the term “tight bomb pattern”.

The plan is to have debris from the village slide down on the road, blocking it. The villagers pose no threat and are all civilians. Dunbar argues that they won’t even take cover; they will run into the streets to wave at the pilots. The bombs will just be killing “children and dogs and old people.” The village will be reduced to rubble, but the road will be cleared in a couple of days anyway. The raid would be more efficient if the bombs were spread out along the hills, away from the village, blocking more of the road; but that will not do. Colonel Cathcart, always trying to impress General Peckem, calls for a tight bomb pattern “for me, for your country, for God, and for that great American, General P. P. Peckem.”

Sound familiar?

Jeff

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Ladapo used the example of an elderly grandmother given more testing consideration over an 8-year-old 3rd grader. Ladapo said more detailed guidance would be coming soon.

Several areas have been rationing hospital care. So, now we ration testing? Is he implying the geezers at The Villages get preference? Will they make other eugenics based decisions pursuant to this policy? As a POTUS said a couple years ago “slow the testing down”.

Meanwhile, in the frozen north.

…an average of 12,247 cases over the past five days.

This is the second-largest daily case average for Michigan since the start of the pandemic. On Wednesday, officials reported an average of 12,929 cases over two days.

Testing has increased to around 50,000 to 60,000 diagnostic tests reported per day on average, with the 7-day positive rate jumping up to 22.93% as of Wednesday. Hospitalizations are on the rise again after slightly decreasing for the past few weeks.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/health/2022/01/03/michigan-re…

Patients in hospital, in ICU and on vents matched or exceeded the numbers following the religious meetings in the fall of 2020, and last April, then fell off a bit over the last couple weeks, but are now starting to trend up again.

Tracking Michigan COVID-19 hospitalization data trends
Tracking inpatients, critical care, ventilator data

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/16/trackin…

Steve

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Testing is becoming a less relevant number.

Hospitalization rates will be the true test of Omicron, Fauci says
www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/02/world/omicron-covid-vaccine-…
Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, noted that many new infections, especially in people who are vaccinated and boosted, result in no symptoms or mild symptoms, making the absolute number of cases less important than they were for previous versions of the virus.

“As you get further on and the infections become less severe, it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations as opposed to the total number of cases,” Dr. Fauci said.

DB2

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“it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations as opposed to the total number of cases,” Dr. Fauci said.”

And the deaths even more so, he didn’t say.

But I notice there are no body count numbers being reported these days in the media.
Used to be there would be daily counts and lots of angst as we passed significant number.
Since we passed 800,000 - not so much.

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…many new infections, especially in people who are vaccinated and boosted, result in no symptoms or mild symptoms,

The hospital numbers have been 80-90% unvaccinated people, ever since the vax was widely distributed. Omicron, like Delta before it, is much more efficient at infecting people than the preceding strains. “Natural” immunity fades, just like immunity from a vax. Some weeks ago, the news ran another hospital bed conversion, guy in the hospital with covid, for the second time, said he’s learned his lesson and will get vaxxed. For every hospital bed conversion, I bet there are several still in denial. I have heard plenty of Doctors say they have had patients that still insist covid is a hoax to they dying breath.

Went to the grocery store tonight. In spite of the all time record high infection rate in Michigan, there are still a minority of both customers and employees in the store without a mask.

Steve

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But I notice there are no body count numbers being reported these days in the media.
Used to be there would be daily counts and lots of angst as we passed significant number.
Since we passed 800,000 - not so much.

Because there is little to nothing to report, especially as far as Omicron is concerned.

The only “new” info I’ve seen involved children with Omicron and, spoiler alert, those that had the most problems were obese children.

JLC

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>>But I notice there are no body count numbers being reported these days <<

Because there is little to nothing to report, especially as far as Omicron is concerned.

I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but the body count is being reported in Michigan.

7DMA of dead is 86 as of yesterday.

for comparison: a peak of 121 on 12/22. In previous surges: 74 on 5/8/21, 126 on 12/8/20 and 144 on 4/17/20.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/health/2022/01/03/michigan-re…

Caught an interview last night, guests were a USian from Mill Valley, CA, and an officer of the WHO in London. The WHO representative cited the same points I have made here: data from South Africa is not relevant to the US. The South African government moved very quickly to impose very strict mitigation measure (measures that would have the USian mob in the street, waiving their assault rifles, again), and it’s summer in South Africa now. A lot of people have moved out to their summer homes, many offices are closed. And only some 6% of South African residents are over 60 years old.

Here in shinyland, over 16% of the population is over 65, it’s the middle of winter, and ignoring mitigation measures is worn by some as a badge of honor.

Steve

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JLC analyzes,

<<<But I notice there are no body count numbers being reported these days in the media.
Used to be there would be daily counts and lots of angst as we passed significant number.
Since we passed 800,000 - not so much.>>>

Because there is little to nothing to report, especially as far as Omicron is concerned.

Daily average deaths from COVID in the US are 1,276. That’s “little to nothing” ???

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html…

Admittedly, it’s now moved to a pandemic of “ignorance and stupidity” since the vaccine has been readily available since April or May of 2021, and the unvaccinated are dying with about 8 times the frequency of their vaccinated neighbors. But still, in what other context would you see almost 1,300 deaths per day “little to nothing to report”.

We only lost about 3,000, total on the 9-11 attack 20 years ago and the country freaked out.

intercst

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"Because there is little to nothing to report [regarding Covid body counts], especially as far as Omicron is concerned.

Daily average deaths from COVID in the US are 1,276. That’s “little to nothing” ???

Yeah, exceeding 9/11 death toll every three days but ‘little to nothing to report’. Crazy.

Regarding Omicron, hospitalizations trail cases and deaths trail hospitalizations. We have yet to see just how hard Omicron will hit the US in terms of deaths. It’s seems to be significantly less virulent/deadly than Delta, but probably by something like 50%, not orders of magnitude. The big majority of Americans have some immunity from vaccine or prior infection, though, and that will provide much more protection against severe disease. Still in the US I fear we have a big enough population of unvaccinated and no-prior-Covid-infection people that Omicron will be pretty devastating.

Not sure where to find numbers for the US, but here in NC the state Covid dashboard has a nice graph tracking hospitalizations, and that is spiking high now, trailing case numbers by maybe a week. We’re getting back up in shouting distance of prior peaks in hospitalizations: 3008 is the latest number, compared to prior highest peak of just under 4000 last January. I’m guessing we will pass the prior peak in the coming week. Hopefully, better treatment will mean less death than last year, but the wave of death that’s in motion from Omicron will be significant.

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Daily average deaths from COVID in the US are 1,276. That’s “little to nothing” ???

This time last year the US had about 80,000 deaths in January or a little under 3000/day. And we still do a very poor job of distinguishing between death FROM and death WITH.

The media seems to be freaking out about COVID/omicron in kids. Fauchi admitted the other day those numbers were “wrong”. Kids admitted to the hospital for something and receive a positive test and marked down as admitted because of COVID instead of with COVID. Yep, that appendicitis or broken wrist was cause by omicron. Skewing the picture. Same thing happening with adults.

Can’t find the article now, but a decent one about 9 things that kids are more likely to die from than COVID. The usual suspects: car accidents, child abuse, bacterial infections, etc. And many buy a long shot. Did a good job about putting things in context which today’s journalism does a poor job of accomplishing.

At this point, you either get the vaccine or don’t. Take your chances and take the consequences.

JLC

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Daily average deaths from COVID in the US are 1,276. That’s “little to nothing”?

To paraphrase Joe Stalin, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

DB2

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Yep, that appendicitis or broken wrist was cause by omicron.

This sounds like medical malpractice to me. Do doctors commonly falsify medical records like this?

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>>Yep, that appendicitis or broken wrist was cause by omicron.<<

This sounds like medical malpractice to me. Do doctors commonly falsify medical records like this?

There have been two conflicting narratives over the past two years:

-The media promotes hysteria, because that is what the media does, about anything and everything.

-a faction seeks to minimize covid by pointing out any possible contributing factor as the “real” cause of death. I saw one article, maybe a year ago, that insisted that only abut 2,000 were killed by covid, all the hundreds of thousands of others died of something else, but the “big conspiracy” blamed it on covid.

DEARBORN, Mich. – Beaumont Health is reporting that health care is at a “breaking point,” with more than 750 COVID patients currently in its hospitals and more than 430 employees out with symptoms.

Officials with the hospital system said that 62% of the COVID patients at its eight hospitals are unvaccinated. Only 8% of patients have had their booster shot.

Due to the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant, there has been a 40% increase in the number of COVID patients being treated at Beaumont over the past week, according to a release.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/health/good-health/2022/01/06…

Beaumont Dearborn is one of several hospitals in the state that have Army medical teams helping out. The Gov has warned that the Army has no more medical people to send. But the goobers refuse to be vaccinated.

Steve…in the bunker

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Don’t forget: based on the number of kids they injure in the US each year, bathtubs are much more dangerous than firearms.

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Yep, that appendicitis or broken wrist was cause by omicron.

This sounds like medical malpractice to me. Do doctors commonly falsify medical records like this?

Not falsifying medical records nor malpractice. The powers that be that are tracking stats, i.e. bean counters, just see a hospital admit with a positive test. What they came to the hospital for and have a positive test are not always correlated. Thus, the broken wrist being counted as a COVID admit is medically false but statistically true.

JLC

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But I notice there are no body count numbers being reported these days in the media.
Used to be there would be daily counts and lots of angst as we passed significant number.
Since we passed 800,000 - not so much.

It’s an election year … and body counts are always bad for the party in power.

1 Like