Face Shields

I get the distinct feeling that I/we are being led on .... so I for one will not continue to "beat a dead horse"

 

hello mr phil. let me start please by saying as far as i am concerned we are in a friendly discussion about covid. if we have a difference of opinion, that is all it is. i have not asked anybody to follow me. when i see posts that i believe are in error then i feel compelled to address that and offer my opinion. i hope that is what this forum is about; an opportunity for us all to come away with more information than we came in with.

i have made i believe so far, two good friends here and would be happy if you are a third.

i have a reasonable level of curiosity and so i do like to track what is happening with covid (and other world events). i spent my life in healthcare and have worked a number of different positions including 30 years as an administrator, as a registered nurse after obtaining that degree at night when i was around 56 years old and 3 years as a long term care (nursing home administrator) one of my masters degrees in is public health where i was trained as an epidemiologist tho as i have noted here before, i never worked in that capacity except as those skills might have been applied in some of my other jobs.

so i just like to offer for your consideration the following thoughts.

1) if you talk about infections, that is a function of testing. the more tests you do, the more cases you will have. the US has tested more than 20 percent of its population, the phils less than 2 percent, just as an example. if covid is present in both populations the US percentage of population with proven infection will be much higher as a percentage. but that doesn't mean anything. it would only mean something if all countries had tested the same proportion of their population, using the same methodologies.

2) the same is true of "death rates" which are deaths as a function of proven cases (which in turn is a function of testing). what is more significant is the number of deaths per (in this case) 100,000 population. the US does have a proportially higher number than most countries. i think only ten or eleven countries have a higher absolute death rate per 100k than the US. why is that? (lets assume testing in all countries is as good (or bad) as all other countries.

3) what can make the US higher? one thing is an older population compared to many (most) other countries. of the highest 20 countries, 8 are in europe which shares the aging population issue. you are aware i am sure that older people are much likely to die from covid (probably more correct to say people with co morbidities ). the nyt report august 13 ath more than 40 percent of US deaths are nursing home associated. most citations i can find agree with that percentage which has held fairly steady throughout the pandemic.

4) enter president johnson. i offered this in a post a while back but had no takers. so the explanation is that president johnson offered a great leap forward in 1965 which started medicare and medicaid. i am sure only an epidemiologist would offer this to you for your consideration. please try to think of the facts involved. the medicaid program offered to pay for nursing home care. all fifty states i think now have nursing home care and more than 80 percent of nursing home patients are cared for under that program.

now, please stay with me. if it has not changed, medicaid patients are housed two to a room, with 60 square feet per bed and one bathroom for two rooms or 4 patients. further, most nursing homes are for profit so i can tell you from actual experience, that budget are tight and profits are encouraged. the US has warehoused its elderly in these cramped facilities since 1965, a high percentage of the US population than any country i think other than the netherlands. (this is all from memory so while the exact numbers might be wrong, the basis is correct i think)

therefore, when covid comes along, here you have this large part of the US population basically set up as covid feed lots. no other country has presented covid with such a fertile ground to grow and multiply and that is in a population that can only feebly resist.

so i only suggest to you and others with an interest in this situation, that it may stir emotions but that alone does not present us with an answer. as an epidemiologist i really am less concerned with cases than i am with the mortality per 100k. we talk here about the phils and also about the US. the phils is about halfway between all countries re mortality per 100 k at less than 3 people. the US with is aging population and warehousing of the elderly is more than 50 per 100 k or about 0.15 percent of the population (doing this in my head as i type)

i am concerned about covid. i am concerned about all disease, my entire life has been spent working in organizations devoted to eliminating or at least tempering the effects of disease.

as a trained epidemiologist, i see that the population of the philippines that i am in close contact such as my neighborhood and my early a m shopping, really do not see covid or covid prevention as an issue they are concerned about for the most part. therefore i believe it is pointless to destroy the economy of this country for 3000 deaths when the populace does not comply. if you are right that this is highly infectious, then i would have to say i think most people have already been exposed. it could not be otherwise if you are right.

i will not make fun of you for your opinions about covid. i just think they are largely misplaced and that the average filipino would much rather be able to fill the rice bowl for his kids than listen to all the "reasons" why he has no job and his kids are not in school

 

hey if that was offensive i apologize. i should have said something more reflective of the economics of this. i am a pragmatist by nature, i pray as an optimist and plan as a pessimist. i think the most important issue for any country is the health of their economy wherein lies the ability to fight any threat. the stronger the better as far as the economy goes. i have spent most of my life in management so the bottom line is where i start analyzing anything.

i will be pleased and happy for recoveries to be v shaped but remain a skeptic about the phils. each quarter will give all of us a new perspective. i do not apologize for my opinions, but that is all they are. if this is a world of one man, one vote it would seem i am in a minority here and thats ok. pragmatists frequently are so i am used to it.

this whole issue with covid, including the posts here, have been not only entertaining but educational. i will continue this as long as i sleep well and wake up happy!

 

ah , but everything i offer here is based either on facts or opinions based in my education and experience.

for example, did you know that we all produce on the average about 46 liters of saliva (spit) per month? did you know that salivia has anti bacteral and anti viral functions and in particular contains a protein known as gp340 which helps to coagulate invasive proteins. knowing that, an epidemiologist might then worry that anti spitting ordinances might work against the elimination from the body such things as the covid virus, increasing the chance of infection although i daresay in the phils that won't prove to be a problem.

if i organize a march on city hall to call for an ordinance to encourage spitting, who is with me?? (virologists in particular should see this as a duty)

 

What you fail to realize is that the economy is much better off than if there was no response.

Had the community simply let the disease run amok it would have infected a much larger number of people. Hospitals would have been overrun at great cost. As the infection rate sky rocketed the economy would have had to shutdown more severely than it has. There would have been much more fear which would have affected the economy negatively.

Because of the controls put in place, most industries including the BPOs remained operational through this.

Therefore there is less damage to the economy because of the controls put in place.

Your logic that doing nothing would not have an impact on the economy is flawed.

 

hello mr skipjack well your first sentence is just an opinion. we do know what happened with the response, there is no way for anyone to know the the economy is much better off than it would have been if there was no response. just repectfully pointing out that you cannot measure that which (you think) you prevented.

your second paragraph appears to be just opinion. i would have to say i do not know what would have happened. again respectfully there are places between the controls that were implemented and "running amok". sweden used voluntary measures. a newsweek article july 31 states that the new cases in sweden have "plummeted" while most european countries are experiencing a new wave. herd immunity in sweden or not? both sides to that argument as well

supporting your point is that swedens economy does not appear to have measurably benefited from the less restrictive measures and their absolute deaths are higher than even the US. they point out that they, like the US, have had a large number/percentage of their deaths occur in nursing homes.

looking for helpful facts will be the actual events that occur in the coming months both in the phils and sweden

i could not find any BPO facts re how they are doing. i did find a quote from Ralf Ellespermann of the "biggest" BPO company in Manila, that "the BPO industry in the philippines will recover. how fast and to what degree is uncertain". certainly suggests some significant negative experience due to covid but does not address exactly what or why it happened. (is it philippine covid controls or something else)

you last two sentences are just your opinions and of course you are welcome to them. likewise i could not disprove them even if so inclined, which i am not.

 

Do you know that as a fact, beyond mere claim?