CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[4th&Five 41525]

6 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

from the replies.  amazing.

[Aqua Buddha 14590]

As a lifelong white person, let me say that I'm embarrassed by all these stupid assed white people.

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

On 8/12/2021 at 7:45 PM, MC Fresh Breath said:

I “boosted” my J&J and with a Moderna shot a few weeks ago.  I got auto registered for the second shot.  Between this and the stories indicating everyone is going to wind up getting a booster I currently think I will keep that appointment.

On 8/12/2021 at 8:39 PM, Pods said:

I wouldn't cancel it just yet for sure. When is the appointment @MC Fresh Breath? 

On 8/13/2021 at 7:44 AM, MC Fresh Breath said:

8/27

 

Update--I kept the appointment just now.  Like I said, figured it puts me further out from the booster rush.  Also, I think in the future I'll claim team Moderna and leave my J&J ways behind me.

Edited August 27, 2021 by MC Fresh Breath

[Newy25 7668]

6 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I think gaps point is that you are validating these insane arguments and viewpoints who's only supporting evidence is "people are saying". There's no logical, medical, or scientific reason to refuse vaccination if you are medically eligible for it. Youre not directly supporting their opinions, but you are accepting it as reasonable and valid. 

If someone tries to tell me the sky is yellow, I'm not going to meet them in the middle and agree it could be green. The sky is blue. Vaccines work. Hesitancy is driven by disinformation. 

I did not validate any argument against a vaccine. If someone read my post as anti vaccine then they simply did not read it.  If that’s is how you read it then you have more than Covid to worry about. Like the loss of basic cognitive function. 

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

6 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

from the replies.  amazing.

 

That's gold.

 

 

[wildcat09 29349]

Also from the replies:

 

 

[FOXHOUND 1021]

You know, before the advent of social media I thought that most people had at least SOME level of scientific literacy, boy was I young and naive. 

There are a lot of morons among us. 

[TexLonghorn 5663]

3 hours ago, GreenspointTexas said:

... literally cumming on their face every chance they get

 

47 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Literally?

Sigh.

I don't know about y'all, but I know I've  seen that movie.

[Sawbonz 27546]

4 hours ago, Newy25 said:

I’m wondering how many of you slammed the Florida governor for his recommendation on the use of a treatment that Fauci just said is “as close to a silver bullet as we have” In the treatment of Covid. Or is Fauci now a polity a hack influenced by his wife’s financial ties to a drug company? 

I don’t know is Fauci actively trying to prevent agencies from enacting reasonable and effective public health strategies that are known to be the main way this control this virus?

Edited August 27, 2021 by Sawbonz
Fucking talk to text

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

39 minutes ago, Newy25 said:

I’m glad you read my post as politically motivated. I’m sure that’s the lens you see everything in based on the language you use. I

In your post before the post about your brother, you equated Desantis to Fauci.  You did this on the political side of the board.  Now you get snarky when people call you out on your bullshit.  

[Celery Man 20934]

32 minutes ago, Newy25 said:

I’m glad you read my post as politically motivated. I’m sure that’s the lens you see everything in based on the language you use. I shared my recent experience because I see how these treatments are getting written about in media today and I can this becoming an issue. My opinions on vaccines is well documented so I did not feel the need to comment on that subject again . 

"I can see this becoming an issue" - you're talking about the politicization of medical treatment for COVID-19. The context in which you are talking about it is of a doctor double checking that you guys aren't opposed to treatment with ivermectin due to it being politicized. The context of this story and how you present it is one in which the concern is that people on the left are resistant to an effective treatment because they dislike the people on the other side of the political aisle, who are proponents of this medicine.

1. that's not really happening. as has been pointed out,
   1. people are criticizing DeSantis because he is grifting off of his constituency's enthusiasm for literally any treatment or preventative measure for COVID-19, effective or not, that is different than masks and vaccines (because libruls)
   2. surely not all but most people who aren't anti vaccine nutjobs would take medical direction from their physician even if it is the medicine that can also be found in horse paste
2. even if it was happening which it is not, it would not be accurate or honest to assert that politicization of COVID-19 treatment is beginning to occur  as evidenced by the mainstream news and people on the internets are reporting on and making fun of the use of horse paste as a COVID-19 home remedy

the reason your brother got covid-19 is because of these fucking idiots, who are also responsible for resisting and politicizing every single step we have taken to minimize the spread and damage of the pandemic, at great cost, as a nation. As a group, they are responsible for hundreds of thousands of dead Americans. This is why we're mad. It's also why people have reacted to your "I had a concerning conversation with a doctor and I'm worried that media coverage of ivermectin has started to politicize the use of this very helpful medicine" story in the way that they have.

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

4 hours ago, Yuk said:

This a a reddit thread on whether any unvaccinated people are coming off vents:

 

Good read.

Will definitely be reading this one off and on through out the day.

 

Quote

Dude, all these young patients now. It’s so alarming. We just had a 30 yr old die last week too. Both his dad and grandfather (or uncle, I can’t remember) died from covid in the first two waves. Despite that neither the patient or any of his family got the vaccine. His entire family caught it. Told me he didn’t know what was going in his body if he got the vaccine, but didn’t have any qualms with the medications we were giving in the hospital even though I know he doesn’t understand what are in those. On a particularly bad night, sating low to mid 80s laying prone on high flow, he begged me near tears that there has to be a medicine to make him feel better. Keep in mind that he’s been randomly refusing things; Intubation - no. NRB on top of his high flow for more oxygenation - no. Zithromax and cefepime - no. Tylenol for fever and headache - no. RT for breathing treatment - no. Even getting him to prone was a fight. I told him he chose not to get the very thing that could probably have prevented him getting covid, or feeling this sick with covid, by refusing the vaccine. A few days later he told a different nurse that he regretted not getting the vaccine. He died three days after. He had changed his mind about intubation but he didn’t even make it through the code I guess. Left behind a wife and two kids under 12.

 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20395]

2 hours ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

 

I know the "Body For Life" dude went through it and barely lived.  And there are stories of some truly healthy folks getting fucked by this as well.  I'm no fat shamer, but I do believe in being honest about one's situation.  Look at that dude and see the fat hanging off his sides.  Big shirt doesn't cover the fact that he is (was?) a walking comorbidity.  And it seems the vast majority of these LeopardsAteMyFace HermCainAward types are all in that category.  Yet, somehow so sure they're not at risk.  Right until they die.  Edit:  Dude even lumps himself in with 'healthy people.'  Were there no mirrors in his home? 

And listen to his breathing. He was having a hard time getting air even before Covid. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33868]

5 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

No shit?

that came shortly after

[AnotherUTFan 9730]

 
I know the "Body For Life" dude went through it and barely lived.  And there are stories of some truly healthy folks getting fucked by this as well.  I'm no fat shamer, but I do believe in being honest about one's situation.  Look at that dude and see the fat hanging off his sides.  Big shirt doesn't cover the fact that he is (was?) a walking comorbidity.  And it seems the vast majority of these LeopardsAteMyFace HermCainAward types are all in that category.  Yet, somehow so sure they're not at risk.  Right until they die.  Edit:  Dude even lumps himself in with 'healthy people.'  Were there no mirrors in his home? 

Just listen to him struggle for breath while "healthy". That's how I felt when I had the mild COVID.

Ranting about Covid vaccine not working while in the hospital for Covid. Then he owns the libs by dying of Covid. 

Lucky bastard!

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

2 minutes ago, AnotherUTFan said:

Just listen to him struggle fronnreath while "healthy". Thats how I felt when I had the mild COVID.
 

 

Oh yeah.  I like the part where he writes "I'm a normally healthy person.  I am over weight, drink too many sodas, and don't exercise a lot."  I'm obviously not a doctor but I am pretty sure that's not the definition of healthy.

 

[Willfully Horn 8008]

Want more people to take the vaccine? Fund the research, report the findings.

[NameAlreadyInUse 5112]

On 8/24/2021 at 10:22 PM, brakeman said:

"The blacks and immigrants, keep spreading the corona."

I'll take, "People I want to stay as far away as possible from" for $1,000, Alex.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33868]

yeah, covid wasn't the only disease being passed around that weekend

[aggie08 21496]

7 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Want more people to take the vaccine? Fund the research, report the findings.

You think possible changes to their menstrual cycle is why those currently unvaxxed are unwilling up take it?

[Willfully Horn 8008]

8 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

You think possible changes to their menstrual cycle is why those currently unvaxxed are unwilling up take it?

I think there likely is a percentage of such folk, yes.

Edited to expand the concern from menstrual cycle to reproductive organs. 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Willfully Horn
Explained

[Celery Man 20934]

Would explain a lot tbh

[Hanrahan 1306]

So our man Rex Racer seems to be on the mend but, SURPRISE!, another Texags poster is in the same hospital with Covid pneumonia.  Vaxx status undisclosed but I'm laying big bucks on negatory.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Hanrahan

[Guest Lobo]

10 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

You think possible changes to their menstrual cycle is why those currently unvaxxed are unwilling up take it?

I think so.  Incredulity seems to always have his period now.  

[aggie08 21496]

Just now, Willfully Horn said:

I think there likely is a percentage of such folk, yes.

Aren't the millions (billions?) of women who already have the shots essentially a menstrual changes test group?

They've done studies and published the results on men, women, young, old, pregnant women, younger and younger kids. But people are drawing the line at, "Well, they haven't specifically funded menstrual changes research yet."?

[DigglerontheHoof 21186]

30 minutes ago, AnotherUTFan said:

Just listen to him struggle for breath while "healthy". That's how I felt when I had the mild COVID.
Lucky bastard!

[Guest Lobo]

Plus, if you gathered 10,000 women in one testing site to see the effects...wouldn't all there menstrual cycles just synch up anyway and void the results?  Based on my vast knowledge the of the female body.  Plus, the large test will attract bears.  Or sharks.  Depends on where they conduct it.

We are really making a run for dumbest fucking country this year.  

[Willfully Horn 8008]

Velcro. And ball bearings.

The wellspring.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris choked up Friday at the reality of the state’s ongoing fight against the pandemic.

“I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to do this,” he said of sustaining efforts against the surging disease. He said it’s “very frustrating” and pointed to the fact that “so much of what we are seeing is preventable.”

https://www.wsfa.com/2021/08/27/i-dont-know-how-much-longer-we-can-do-this-says-emotional-alabama-state-health-officer/

[Michael Knight 12977]

A Texan who led anti-mask efforts and publicly opposed mandatory COVID-19 precautions is hospitalized with the coronavirus, and his pregnant wife says his chances of survival aren’t good.

 

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article253786678.html

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20395]

3 hours ago, crash_davis said:

Ranting about Covid vaccine not working while in the hospital for Covid. Then he owns the libs by dying of Covid. 

Hey, at least he died doing what he loved: owning the libs and not having worms.  And, as a lib, I feel owned.  Now back to White Lotus. 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20395]

4 minutes ago, Michael Knight said:

A Texan who led anti-mask efforts and publicly opposed mandatory COVID-19 precautions is hospitalized with the coronavirus, and his pregnant wife says his chances of survival aren’t good.

 

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article253786678.html

Dude, this is at least the third time this has been posted.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

Denton 

 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19100]

7 minutes ago, Michael Knight said:

A Texan who led anti-mask efforts and publicly opposed mandatory COVID-19 precautions is hospitalized with the coronavirus, and his pregnant wife says his chances of survival aren’t good.

 

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article253786678.html

And of course there is a GoFund Me.  

[TexLonghorn 5663]

Can we develop a competing GoFuck Yourself website?  Tired of these money begs from people who won't take care of themselves at all.

 

Instead of giving the money to the person, the donated money would immediately go to the hospital and staff that took care of the person after the deceased got themselves into their situation.

Edited August 27, 2021 by TexLonghorn

[WhatTheBuck 28776]

28 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Velcro.

The greatest Velcro moment in history.

 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20395]

2 minutes ago, TexLonghorn said:

Can we develop a competing GoFuck Yourself website?

The best URL has already been taken.

https://gfy.com

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

30 minutes ago, Hanrahan said:

So our man Rex Racer seems to be on the mend but, SURPRISE!, another Texags poster is in the same hospital with Covid pneumonia.  Vaxx status undisclosed but I'm laying big bucks on negatory.

 

I looked around, and apparently the new COVID buddy was waiting for the Novavax, so no, not vaccinated. COVID pneumonia is no joke, that's going to be a long recovery.

Also COVID buddy was adamant about who is vaccinated vs who is not:

Two MAGA people are COVID buddies in the same hospital, so that's going to be awkward.

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

9 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

And of course there is a GoFund Me.  

nearly every one of those socialism haters start one.  

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

1 hour ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

Will definitely be reading this one off and on through out the day.

 

 

I spent some time reading it, and I don't know how you do it. It was simultaneously sad and ragey to peruse. Our mental healthcare resources in this country were already stressed to the breaking point and these critical care workers are in desperate need of therapy. Just heartbreaking and so completely overwhelming.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13510]

45 minutes ago, Hanrahan said:

So our man Rex Racer seems to be on the mend but, SURPRISE!, another Texags poster is in the same hospital with Covid pneumonia.  Vaxx status undisclosed but I'm laying big bucks on negatory.

TexAgs discount. For every 2 days at Caprock you get a free tube of horse paste. While supplies last.

[jimmyjazz 45898]

8 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

 

Again, with renewed vigor:  what the fucking fuck?

[washparkhorn 9939]

2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Again, with renewed vigor:  what the fucking fuck?

Tradition!

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

3 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I spent some time reading it, and I don't know how you do it. It was simultaneously sad and ragey to peruse. Our mental healthcare resources in this country were already stressed to the breaking point and these critical care workers are in desperate need of therapy. Just heartbreaking and so completely overwhelming.

There is some harrowing stuff in there as well (the mothers who deliver and die for example).  I think I read it b/c like the posts from our nurses here I want to know what those who are on the front lines have seen.  Sure, some could be faking it (internet after all), but I doubt they all are.

[WhatTheBuck 28776]

4 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Tradition!

She’s only been told once.

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

But it's a fucking hoax.

Goddamn, this makes me ragey.  And it got dusty in my office all of a sudden.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/children-covid-delta.html

 

Quote

Helpless to improve her infant son’s breathing as he was about to be intubated, Catherine Perrilloux did the only thing that came naturally to her in that moment, the worst of her life: She looked away and prayed. The boy, known as Junior, was two months old and gravely ill with Covid-19.

“I see a bunch of them crowding around the room with the ventilator machine, and then they pull out the tubing, and I’m just losing control,” Ms. Perrilloux, a dean at a nearby private school, recalled last week in her son’s room in the pediatric intensive care unit. “There’s nothing that you could say to make it better. You can’t do anything. It’s just paralyzing.”

 

Quote

At Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where the intensive care unit has been jammed with Covid-19 patients, scenes like this have played out unrelentingly over the past month. Nurses raced around monitoring one gut-wrenching case after another. One child was getting a complicated breathing treatment known as ECMO, a last resort after ventilators fail, which nurses said was almost unheard-of for pediatric cases. About a half-dozen others were in various stages of distress.

“We all thought, ‘Well, thankfully it’s not happening to the kids; none of us would be able to stomach that,’” said Mark Melancon, a longtime nurse at the hospital, recalling previous stages of the coronavirus pandemic. “Fast forward to now, and it’s happening with the kids.”

 

Quote

Mr. Melancon said that until this summer, the hospital had treated only one or two Covid-19 patients at a time. Now, a procession of patients require constant attention, their oxygen levels often dipping precariously low without maximum intervention.

As children’s hospitals in many parts of the United States admit more Covid-19 patients, a result of the highly contagious Delta variant, federal and state health officials are grappling with a sharp new concern: children not yet eligible for vaccination in places with substantial viral spread, now at higher risk of being infected than at any other time in the pandemic. Nowhere is that worry greater than in Louisiana, which has among the highest new daily case rates in the country and only 40 percent of people are fully vaccinated, putting children at particular risk as they return to school.

 

Spoiler

Most children with Covid-19 have only mild symptoms, and there is not enough evidence to conclude that Delta makes some of them sicker than other variants do, scientists say. Doctors and nurses at Children’s Hospital agreed with that assessment.

Theresa Sokol, Louisiana’s top epidemiologist, said that people younger than 18 had among the highest test positivity rates in the state and were responsible for a significant share of transmission, with many cases most likely undetected.

“So many days are filled with this puzzle of: We don’t have enough beds for this patient who wants to come, so how are we going to shuffle our children around to accommodate one more?” said Devon H. Relle, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where she worked the front desk of the 17-bed I.C.U. The hospital was also seeing an early, worrisome wave of respiratory syncytial virus, known as R.S.V., which can cause some of the same symptoms and was contributing to the overflow conditions.

The crush of Covid-19 at Children’s Hospital grew so intense this month that the state called in a federal “surge team” of emergency responders from the Department of Health and Human Services’s National Disaster Medical System. The group of about 14 included a physician, a nurse practitioner, nurses, paramedics, a respiratory therapist and a pharmacist.

The team was the first assigned to a children’s hospital during the pandemic.

“Covid-19 right now down here is so endemic that you don’t have to have a specific exposure, because it’s just out there,” said Anne Barylick, a nurse practitioner on the surge team who handled patient intake in the emergency department and Covid-19 units. “Statistically, you’re going to run into it.”

Dr. Mark W. Kline, the hospital’s physician in chief, said that its overcrowded units threatened care for children across the region. It is one of the few advanced children’s hospitals in Louisiana and bordering states, he said, and there are few other options for specialized pediatric care.

Ms. Barylick, who works at a community health center in Rhode Island, was also deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But this deployment was fundamentally different, she said. Instead of helping with a field hospital or pop-up clinic under a tent after a natural disaster, she and her colleagues were woven into the hospital’s normal operations. They rotated with members of the regular nursing staff to triage young patients and greeted them in the emergency room to assess whether they might have Covid-19.

The need here was clear.

“I have never seen our faculty look so tired or sad,” said Dr. Adele K. Evans, who leads the hospital’s tracheostomy team. About 60 members of the medical staff were in quarantine last week. She called it the most difficult moment in the hospital’s history.

It was hard to predict which of the hospital’s Covid-19 patients would recover, Ms. Barylick said. To her relief, she had seen mainly good outcomes.

“I don’t want any kids to get this, because I can’t guarantee that it’s not going to be your kid that's going to have a problem,” she said. “But overall, statistically, most of them are doing fairly well.”

But the sickest Covid-19 patients in the hospital were as severely ill as adults, nurses said, struggling to get enough oxygen. While some children were suffering more because of underlying health problems, other severe cases at the hospital had little explanation.

“You can’t show them, really, to be honest, that this is kind of uncharted territory,” Mr. Melancon said of the anguished conversations he has with parents of children sick with Covid-19. “You’ve got to project some confidence.”

Members of the surge team and the hospital staff said in interviews last week that Covid-19 had changed how providers cared for young patients, forcing them to “cluster” care by entering rooms less frequently but with more staff. That, along with limits on visitors, meant children were sometimes alone, said Angela Seput, the director of an acute care unit. And with highly infectious patients nearby, parents could no longer approach the nursing station as easily and ask for help, she said.

Medical staff throughout the hospital said the causes of illness in children were often simple: parents, family members and friends who were unvaccinated and not wearing masks.

“I’ve had to kind of make peace with that people are not doing what they’re supposed to. The kids are suffering,” Mr. Melancon said. “Not that I accept it, but if I get hung up in the anger of it, I would walk around confronting people in Walmart, here, everywhere.”

“I can’t tell them, ‘Why didn’t you isolate this kid?’” Mr. Melancon continued. “So we just tell them, ‘Your kid has Covid. It’s really hard on the lungs. Your child’s very sick. We’ll do everything we can to get him better.’”

Of the roughly 70 children admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 this month, about half were 12 or older — and thus eligible for vaccination — but only one was fully vaccinated, said Dr. Kline, the physician in chief.

The virus had wreaked havoc particularly on patients with special needs and pre-existing conditions, including Calvin Bethley’s son, who has asthma and scoliosis. He was just beginning to eat again after a long bout with Covid-19 and related pneumonia.

Two doors away, Quintetta Edwards watched over her 17-year-old son, who has Down syndrome and was healing from his own lengthy battle with the virus. During his stay, staff members sometimes had to restrain him as he writhed against the tubes connected to him. Ms. Edwards said she felt a sense of profound guilt when her son told the nursing staff that his illness was his own fault.

In the I.C.U. last week, Raquel Diaz, who has worked as a janitor there for over a decade, said the surge of Covid-19 patients had left her demoralized and worried about her own safety, even after being vaccinated and battling the illness last year.

Seeing children in the rooms that she cleans suffer, she said, was “overwhelming.”

Behind her, beeping screens monitoring the low blood oxygen levels and alarmingly high heart rates of the children told the story.

Nearby, medical teams were watching over an intubated toddler. The patient eventually needed a rare treatment known as high-frequency oscillatory ventilation, which involves gentle vibrations that move air around in the lungs. By Thursday, with the odds of survival fading, a small crown was placed on the child’s head.

Down the hall, there was better news: Junior’s condition was improving.

His path to intubation had been swift. His sister, 15 months old, came down with what seemed to be a mild cold. Before long, Junior’s day care reported that he was gagging when drinking from a bottle. The family’s pediatrician diagnosed him with R.S.V. and prescribed albuterol, an asthma medication that had little effect on him.

A day later, Ms. Perrilloux, who along with her husband is fully vaccinated, drove him to the hospital. “As soon as I brought him in, they noticed right off the bat, something was off,” she said. He tested positive for Covid-19 and struggled to breathe even on a high-flow oxygen machine. He was intubated the next day.

Ms. Perrilloux began working during the long days in the room, to keep herself from shaking.

“You’re sitting there, thinking, ‘What could I have done differently?’” she said.

Last week, Ms. Perrilloux slept and ate in her son’s room. She held daily prayer sessions with her pastor and family. At bedtime, she smoothed Junior’s curly brown hair gently to avoid interfering with the machinery that was keeping him alive. She positioned her chair to observe the monitors tracking his vital signs, wrapping herself in hospital blankets.

“With the six sisters that he has at home, he has no choice but to be strong,” she said.

Ms. Perrilloux received the news shortly after 8 a.m. on Friday: The hospital was ready to try extubating Junior and putting him on oxygen. Around 10:30 a.m., Ms. Perrilloux clasped her hands and prayed. As the I.C.U. team delicately removed Junior’s breathing tube, there were quiet cheers.

“It’s OK. It’s OK,” Ms. Perrilloux told her baby softly.

Junior left the I.C.U. on Tuesday but remained in the hospital on high-flow oxygen, still with occasional moments of irregular breathing. Ms. Perrilloux has taken to playing Etta James for him in his new room.

“It soothes him,” she said, “and he goes to sleep.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Francisco 2.0

[jimmyjazz 45898]

7 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Again, with renewed vigor:  what the fucking fuck?

I know I do this too much, so I won't bore y'all with the details, but using census and vaccination data, here's how it breaks out for the United States (V=vaxxed, UV=unvaxxed):

White:  99.5M V, 99.5M UV

Black:  17.7M V, 26.5M UV

Hispanic/Latino:  27.5M V, 33.6M UV

Asian:  13M V, 6.4M UV

 

So, to tie it up in a nice little summary:

White:  99.5M unvaxxed

Minorities:  66.5M unvaxxed

 

Don't believe the hype.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Don't believe the hype.

I suspect JBob believes whatever Dan Patrick says is the way it is......or ought to be.....or something like that.

[GreenspointTexas 9600]

11 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

But it's a fucking hoax.

Goddamn, this makes me ragey.  And it got dusty in my office all of a sudden.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/children-covid-delta.html

 

 

 

 

  Hide contents

Most children with Covid-19 have only mild symptoms, and there is not enough evidence to conclude that Delta makes some of them sicker than other variants do, scientists say. Doctors and nurses at Children’s Hospital agreed with that assessment.

Theresa Sokol, Louisiana’s top epidemiologist, said that people younger than 18 had among the highest test positivity rates in the state and were responsible for a significant share of transmission, with many cases most likely undetected.

“So many days are filled with this puzzle of: We don’t have enough beds for this patient who wants to come, so how are we going to shuffle our children around to accommodate one more?” said Devon H. Relle, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where she worked the front desk of the 17-bed I.C.U. The hospital was also seeing an early, worrisome wave of respiratory syncytial virus, known as R.S.V., which can cause some of the same symptoms and was contributing to the overflow conditions.

The crush of Covid-19 at Children’s Hospital grew so intense this month that the state called in a federal “surge team” of emergency responders from the Department of Health and Human Services’s National Disaster Medical System. The group of about 14 included a physician, a nurse practitioner, nurses, paramedics, a respiratory therapist and a pharmacist.

The team was the first assigned to a children’s hospital during the pandemic.

“Covid-19 right now down here is so endemic that you don’t have to have a specific exposure, because it’s just out there,” said Anne Barylick, a nurse practitioner on the surge team who handled patient intake in the emergency department and Covid-19 units. “Statistically, you’re going to run into it.”

Dr. Mark W. Kline, the hospital’s physician in chief, said that its overcrowded units threatened care for children across the region. It is one of the few advanced children’s hospitals in Louisiana and bordering states, he said, and there are few other options for specialized pediatric care.

Ms. Barylick, who works at a community health center in Rhode Island, was also deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But this deployment was fundamentally different, she said. Instead of helping with a field hospital or pop-up clinic under a tent after a natural disaster, she and her colleagues were woven into the hospital’s normal operations. They rotated with members of the regular nursing staff to triage young patients and greeted them in the emergency room to assess whether they might have Covid-19.

The need here was clear.

“I have never seen our faculty look so tired or sad,” said Dr. Adele K. Evans, who leads the hospital’s tracheostomy team. About 60 members of the medical staff were in quarantine last week. She called it the most difficult moment in the hospital’s history.

It was hard to predict which of the hospital’s Covid-19 patients would recover, Ms. Barylick said. To her relief, she had seen mainly good outcomes.

“I don’t want any kids to get this, because I can’t guarantee that it’s not going to be your kid that's going to have a problem,” she said. “But overall, statistically, most of them are doing fairly well.”

But the sickest Covid-19 patients in the hospital were as severely ill as adults, nurses said, struggling to get enough oxygen. While some children were suffering more because of underlying health problems, other severe cases at the hospital had little explanation.

“You can’t show them, really, to be honest, that this is kind of uncharted territory,” Mr. Melancon said of the anguished conversations he has with parents of children sick with Covid-19. “You’ve got to project some confidence.”

Members of the surge team and the hospital staff said in interviews last week that Covid-19 had changed how providers cared for young patients, forcing them to “cluster” care by entering rooms less frequently but with more staff. That, along with limits on visitors, meant children were sometimes alone, said Angela Seput, the director of an acute care unit. And with highly infectious patients nearby, parents could no longer approach the nursing station as easily and ask for help, she said.

Medical staff throughout the hospital said the causes of illness in children were often simple: parents, family members and friends who were unvaccinated and not wearing masks.

“I’ve had to kind of make peace with that people are not doing what they’re supposed to. The kids are suffering,” Mr. Melancon said. “Not that I accept it, but if I get hung up in the anger of it, I would walk around confronting people in Walmart, here, everywhere.”

“I can’t tell them, ‘Why didn’t you isolate this kid?’” Mr. Melancon continued. “So we just tell them, ‘Your kid has Covid. It’s really hard on the lungs. Your child’s very sick. We’ll do everything we can to get him better.’”

Of the roughly 70 children admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 this month, about half were 12 or older — and thus eligible for vaccination — but only one was fully vaccinated, said Dr. Kline, the physician in chief.

The virus had wreaked havoc particularly on patients with special needs and pre-existing conditions, including Calvin Bethley’s son, who has asthma and scoliosis. He was just beginning to eat again after a long bout with Covid-19 and related pneumonia.

Two doors away, Quintetta Edwards watched over her 17-year-old son, who has Down syndrome and was healing from his own lengthy battle with the virus. During his stay, staff members sometimes had to restrain him as he writhed against the tubes connected to him. Ms. Edwards said she felt a sense of profound guilt when her son told the nursing staff that his illness was his own fault.

In the I.C.U. last week, Raquel Diaz, who has worked as a janitor there for over a decade, said the surge of Covid-19 patients had left her demoralized and worried about her own safety, even after being vaccinated and battling the illness last year.

Seeing children in the rooms that she cleans suffer, she said, was “overwhelming.”

Behind her, beeping screens monitoring the low blood oxygen levels and alarmingly high heart rates of the children told the story.

Nearby, medical teams were watching over an intubated toddler. The patient eventually needed a rare treatment known as high-frequency oscillatory ventilation, which involves gentle vibrations that move air around in the lungs. By Thursday, with the odds of survival fading, a small crown was placed on the child’s head.

Down the hall, there was better news: Junior’s condition was improving.

His path to intubation had been swift. His sister, 15 months old, came down with what seemed to be a mild cold. Before long, Junior’s day care reported that he was gagging when drinking from a bottle. The family’s pediatrician diagnosed him with R.S.V. and prescribed albuterol, an asthma medication that had little effect on him.

A day later, Ms. Perrilloux, who along with her husband is fully vaccinated, drove him to the hospital. “As soon as I brought him in, they noticed right off the bat, something was off,” she said. He tested positive for Covid-19 and struggled to breathe even on a high-flow oxygen machine. He was intubated the next day.

Ms. Perrilloux began working during the long days in the room, to keep herself from shaking.

“You’re sitting there, thinking, ‘What could I have done differently?’” she said.

Last week, Ms. Perrilloux slept and ate in her son’s room. She held daily prayer sessions with her pastor and family. At bedtime, she smoothed Junior’s curly brown hair gently to avoid interfering with the machinery that was keeping him alive. She positioned her chair to observe the monitors tracking his vital signs, wrapping herself in hospital blankets.

“With the six sisters that he has at home, he has no choice but to be strong,” she said.

Ms. Perrilloux received the news shortly after 8 a.m. on Friday: The hospital was ready to try extubating Junior and putting him on oxygen. Around 10:30 a.m., Ms. Perrilloux clasped her hands and prayed. As the I.C.U. team delicately removed Junior’s breathing tube, there were quiet cheers.

“It’s OK. It’s OK,” Ms. Perrilloux told her baby softly.

Junior left the I.C.U. on Tuesday but remained in the hospital on high-flow oxygen, still with occasional moments of irregular breathing. Ms. Perrilloux has taken to playing Etta James for him in his new room.

“It soothes him,” she said, “and he goes to sleep.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ragey is an understatement