CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[Bookman 4764]

5 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

So, this is an interesting anecdotal fact:

A fried of mine has a son in (small, rural, conservative area) high school, who is taking an AP calculus class. I was tutoring him yesterday evening, and we got to talking about students wearing masks in school. According to the son, 6 out 7 students in the AP class wear masks, including him. But in his "normal" level classes, its only 2 or 3 out of 20 or so wearing masks.

I would love to see more statistics on this type of thing from a large number of schools.

 

edit: Son also said most teachers are not wearing masks, but his calculus teacher (old guy who retired and was rehired to teach just a couple of sections) does. Apparently the only teachers wearing masks are the olds.

 

 

Yeah it's kind of funny how those who are good at math are into vaccines and masking and shit.

[Born to Run 6601]

 
So, this is an interesting anecdotal fact:
A fried of mine has a son in (small, rural, conservative area) high school, who is taking an AP calculus class. I was tutoring him yesterday evening, and we got to talking about students wearing masks in school. According to the son, 6 out 7 students in the AP class wear masks, including him. But in his "normal" level classes, its only 2 or 3 out of 20 or so wearing masks.
I would love to see more statistics on this type of thing from a large number of schools.
 
edit: Son also said most teachers are not wearing masks, but his calculus teacher (old guy who retired and was rehired to teach just a couple of sections) does. Apparently the only teachers wearing masks are the olds.
 
 

I've heard that from a lot of parents including one whose kid's covid infection was traced back to a regular level class that was largely unvaccinated.

The mouth breathers breed more mouth breathers.

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[Francisco 2.0 32598]

47 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

Dude that's the legendary Popeye's guest experience. They must teach it in their management program. 

Closest Popeye's to me is about 15 miles away, in one of the most unlikely locations for any fast food place (across street from a church, next door to an apartment complex and an elementary school).  It's the only fast food place for at least half a mile radius.  Yet, its service is outstanding.  The same woman has worked behind the counter for 10 years or so.  Manager has been there something like 15 years.  No staff turnover to speak of.  Since Covid, everyplace has staffing problems but this one solitary Popeye's.  I don't know if it's a front for a cartel (holla Breaking Bad), or someone is smuggling dope out the back door, or what.  But it's always clean, service is prompt, and they don't screw up orders.  It's baffling.  

Edited September 22, 2021 by Francisco 2.0

[C-Man 27781]

1 minute ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Closest Popeye's to me is about 15 miles away, in one of the most unlikely locations for any fast food place (across street from a church, next door to an apartment complex and an elementary school).  It's the only fast food place for at least half a mile radius.  Yet, its service is outstanding.  The same woman has worked behind the counter for 10 years or so.  Manager has been there something like 15 years.  No staff turnover to speak of.  Since Covid, everyplace has staffing problems but this one solitary Popeye's.  I don't know if its a front for a cartel (holla Breaking Bad), or someone is smuggling dope out the back door, or what.  But it's always clean, service is prompt, and they don't screw up orders.  It's baffling.  

They're not serving chicken. They're serving unicorn.

[Guest Lobo]

Mmm, that sounds good...I'll have that.  

living in Chicago and then the South, I wasn't exactly a regular but I'd been to enough Popeye's to know to avoid Popeye's.  Wife and I were driving clear across Kansas to get to MCI to fly home on Christmas Day about 8-10 years ago.  Only thing open on the entire IH-70 is a Popeye's in Junction City/Fort Riley.  She needs lunch.  She says drive-thru is fine.  I tell her, "You're not going through the drive-thru on your first visit to a Popeye's...there's no way in hell they'll get your order right.  We go inside and watch 'em bag it and we can get napkins, condiments, and a straw for you!"  We order inside, it's filthy, everybody's crabby, people waiting around for their order for half an hour.  I didn't even bother ordering in the hopes we'd get outta there faster.  She ordered some simple combo but being her, had to ask 7 questions and make 3 substitutions.  Gets back some convoluted version of her order but I'm already outta the fucking parking lot, we gotta flight to catch. 

She's a very patient and forgiving soul (has to be to stay with me)...so she eats the f'd up meal and says, "I'm sure it's because it's Christmas Day...that's probably why things were not going smoothly in there and why they messed up my order."  I just smiled and said, "Bless your Heart."  That was actually a decently run Popeye's.  That's just how they are.  It can be pretty delicious at times though, I'll give 'em that.  I just don't have the patience for that shit. /csb 

Back to Covid-19.  We had a ISD board meeting last night with no incidents.  I haz disappoint.  Even our local nextdoor page is cooling down a bit.  I'm sure this means some sort of secret protest is being mounted as we speak. 

Edited September 23, 2021 by Lobo

[staboner 5084]

damn i could use some popeyes right now. its breakfast this way but ain't nothing wrong with some breakfast chicken. 

[Born to Run 6601]

damn i could use some popeyes right now. its breakfast this way but ain't nothing wrong with some breakfast chicken. 

Breakfast chicken is best chicken. Even better if served 100 miles off shore whilst trolling.

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[Bookman 4764]

3 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

 It sounds terrifying.

You're right about this. If you die from covid you had a horrible death.

[Js1 87187]

6 minutes ago, Born to Run said:

Breakfast chicken is best chicken. Even better if served 100 miles off shore whilst trolling.

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk
 

Chick-Fil-A taught me that breakfast chicken is best chicken 

[cactusflinthead 27627]

@ouflak

You might have missed the conversation about the sociological implications of the anti-vax Trump portion being the mark in a con. That's their excuse for avoiding it. They can't admit to being wrong to anyone outside their group. It's posited that it is going to need to be leaders in their group to give them a face saving out. A cooler is the term used by the socios. 

It's different for other groups. Black folks aren't the only ones that have been mistreated by the medical community. But, I can't see them being influenced by this

"[The] language you hear throughout Indian country is 'be a good relative,'" Kerry Hawk Lessard, the executive director of Baltimore and Boston-based Urban Indian Health program Native American LifeLines, told PBS. "Do this for the grandmas, do this for the ceremony, do this for the language, because our people are precious....We already lost a lot. We can't afford to lose more."

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/562270-native-americans-continue-to-boast-highest?amp

 

It would be cool if everybody had that same attitude. But, that ain't fucking gonna happen. So, we have to resort to the stick.

Make no mistake, they will find the leverage necessary or you can get sick and possibly die. More people died in Alabama this year than were born. Graveyard don't lie. That fact doesn't give a shit about history, economics, or anything. It's not a myth, an exaggerated claim, or a hoax. We are pushing 700k now. Be reluctant, wait and see, virus don't fucking care. 

If it helps to point at big stupid crackers dying in denial to get someone vaxed then point and laugh after you get the jab. 

I'm becoming more jaded and cynical. Don't wanna be saved? Fine. Don't say we didn't try. Well, you can but nobody gives a damn.

[Brisketexan 106909]

This is why I am pissed at BLM.  If they matter, then get out there and pound the pavement doing outreach to counter or stop the spread of misinformation.  So far, people are choosing to be disenfranchised.  This isn’t racism or something they cannot control.

Yep.

make it a 3-piece, spicy, and you got a deal

Peace through Popeyes. That’s my platform. For everything.

Seriously.  If the BLM people truly believe that black lives matter, they should be doing everything in their power to get those black lives vaccinated so they can, in fact, matter.

This really is an easy one. 100X more black lives will be saved by a good vaccine rate than most any other measure. It’s for everyone, but to the extent that black people are behind, any community advocacy group should be working to close the gap.

[SaucyJack 3520]

1 hour ago, C-Man said:

They're not serving chicken. They're serving unicorn.

[brakeman 28751]

Quick P.S.A.

Edited September 23, 2021 by brakeman
chicken nugget dipping sauce talk is not going away.

[washparkhorn 9973]

Data: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-race-ethnicity/

Latest Data on COVID-19 Vaccinations by Race/Ethnicity
Nambi Ndugga Follow @nambinjn on Twitter , Latoya Hill Follow @hill_latoya on Twitter , and Samantha Artiga Follow @SArtiga2 on Twitter
Published: Sep 22, 2021

 

• As of this week, 77% of the adult population in the United States have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
  • While this progress represents a marked achievement in vaccinations that has led to steep declines in COVID-19 cases and deaths, vaccination coverage—and the protections provided by it—remains uneven across the country.
  • With the continued spread of the more transmissible Delta variant, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are rising, largely among unvaccinated people.
  • While white adults accounted for the largest share (60%) of unvaccinated adults,
  • Black and Hispanic people remain less likely than their White counterparts to have received a vaccine, leaving them at increased risk, particularly as the variant spreads.
  • However, the data show that these disparities are narrowing over time, particularly for Hispanic people.
• The CDC reports demographic characteristics, including race/ethnicity, of people receiving COVID-19 vaccinations at the national level.
  • As of September 21, 2021, CDC reported that race/ethnicity was known for 59% of people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
  • Among this group, nearly two thirds were White (60%), 10% were Black, 17% were Hispanic, 6% were Asian, 1% were American Indian or Alaska Native, and <1% were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, while 5% reported multiple or other race.
  • However, CDC data also show that recent vaccinations are reaching larger shares of Hispanic, and Black populations compared to overall vaccinations.
  • Among vaccines administered in the past 14 days, 23% have gone to Hispanic people and 14% to Black people (Figure 1).
  • These recent patterns suggest a narrowing of racial gaps in vaccinations at the national level, particularly for Hispanic and Black people, who account for a larger share of recent vaccinations compared to their share of the total population (23% vs. 17% and 14% vs. 12%, respectively).
  • While these data provide helpful insights at a national level, to date, CDC is not publicly reporting state-level data on the racial/ethnic composition of people vaccinated.

 

Other factors affecting vaccination rates (county level (no TX, NM or CO in May 2021)): https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/vaccination-is-local-covid-19-vaccination-rates-vary-by-county-and-key-characteristics/

[Beau Vine 55867]

Wife and I are headed to Los Alamos tomorrow for a long weekend.  The county level data for NM is really bizarre.

At least 1 dose of vaccine:

Los Alamos County: 94.9%

Taos County 92.1%

Rio Arriba County (just north of Los Alamos): 92.9%

Santa Fe: 90.5%

McKinley County (Gallup, big Navajo res) 101.9% (?!?)

Lincoln County (Ruidoso, Trumpville, full of west Texans): 65.5%

Torrance County (Albq suburb): 47.9%

Catron County (BFE): 48%

Roosevelt (Portales): 43.4%

 

[washparkhorn 9973]

3 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Wife and I are headed to Los Alamos tomorrow for a long weekend.  The county level data for NM is really bizarre.

At least 1 dose of vaccine:

Los Alamos County: 94.9%

Taos County 92.1%

Rio Arriba County (just north of Los Alamos): 92.9%

Santa Fe: 90.5%

McKinley County (Gallup, big Navajo res) 101.9% (?!?)

Lincoln County (Ruidoso, Trumpville, full of west Texans): 65.5%

Torrance County (Albq suburb): 47.9%

Catron County (BFE): 48%

Roosevelt (Portales): 43.4%

 

 Native Americans are well vaccinated. It's the least the U.S. can do.

Los Alamos reminds me of Boulder, Colorado. Heavy science demographic and the income and quality of life that rewards such thinking. 

[Beau Vine 55867]

3 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Los Alamos reminds me of Boulder, Colorado. Heavy science demographic and the income and quality of life that rewards such thinking. 

That's a very big part of why we're retiring there.

[bolverk 30334]

13 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Wife and I are headed to Los Alamos tomorrow for a long weekend.  The county level data for NM is really bizarre.

At least 1 dose of vaccine:

Los Alamos County: 94.9%

Taos County 92.1%

Rio Arriba County (just north of Los Alamos): 92.9%

Santa Fe: 90.5%

McKinley County (Gallup, big Navajo res) 101.9% (?!?)

Lincoln County (Ruidoso, Trumpville, full of west Texans): 65.5%

Torrance County (Albq suburb): 47.9%

Catron County (BFE): 48%

Roosevelt (Portales): 43.4%

 

Here's a map of the region from NYTimes showing the percentage of the eligible population (12+ years) that is fully vaccinated. The NM numbers don't really surprise me as Eastern NM is for all intents and purposes West Texas, culturally speaking (West of the Pecos is a different flavor).

Dat Austin-San Antonio corridor doe.

[washparkhorn 9973]

2 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

That's a very big part of why we're retiring there.

I am green with jealous envy.

[WBT 20981]

The Valles Caldera is badass.

[bolverk 30334]

Brian Williams' reaction this well-known freak-out is simply sublime.

Edit: It's the second tweet below.

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by bolverk

[Brisketexan 106909]

9 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Brian Williams' reaction this well-known freak-out is simply sublime.

Edit: It's the second tweet below.

 

He got a BAD edible, man.

[RDCanecutter 26895]

17 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

I am green with jealous envy.

 

1 hour ago, WBT said:

The Valles Caldera is badass.

If that is what the scientists are calling a titty mashed on glass, yes.

[Francisco 2.0 32598]

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/idaho-covid-crisis-standards-care?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

 

Quote

Ashley Carvalho was a few hours into her night shift as a doctor in a Boise, Idaho, hospital earlier this month when she got a text from her fiancé asking how she was doing.

She thought about the COVID-19 patient, a man in his 40s, whose condition had deteriorated within an hour of her starting work that night. She thought of the conversation she’d had to have with his young family about switching to comfort care and then his death soon after.

 

Quote

She thought about the second person with COVID who'd died shortly after that, as well as the other patients filling up all 14 beds in the intensive care unit — all with the same disease, all unvaccinated — who required her attention.

She thought of the abuse she’d received from one man’s angry family members, who had berated her for not treating him with ivermectin, a deworming drug falsely promoted as a cure in conspiracy circles but that the FDA has warned against using in COVID patients. She thought of how police had to remove the man’s family after his son-in-law told her, “If you don’t do this, I have a lot of ways to get people to do something, and they’re all sitting in my gun safe at home.”

 

Quote

Her eyes welling with tears, she took a selfie and sent it to her fiancé: “It’s going like this,” she wrote.

Like other medical workers in her state, Carvalho is exhausted and exasperated. Idaho currently has the lowest vaccination rate in the country, and the number of vaccine doses administered hasn’t been climbing significantly — but infections have. As of Saturday, there were 686 patients hospitalized in the state with COVID, 180 of them in ICUs. That’s hundreds more than what flooded hospitals during the previous surge in December 2020, before safe and effective vaccines were widely available.

 

Spoiler

Carvalho and her colleagues cannot fathom how they’ve ended up in this situation. She has anger — certainly — but that requires too much energy. She’s mostly just sad and burned out.

“I think it’s just kind of a hopeless feeling,” she told BuzzFeed News after finishing her shift on Tuesday evening. “Last year at this time, I was very anxious about COVID, and I was just hoping and hoping for the day when we’d have a vaccine. It never occurred to me that there would be a day when we have a vaccine, and I’m actually more anxious now because we have something that can really prevent this and people aren’t taking it.”

The selfie Ashley Carvalho took during her particularly difficult night shift.

Currently, 50 of the 51 COVID patients in ICUs part of the St. Luke's Health System — a chain covering southeastern Idaho, eastern Oregon, and northern Nevada — are unvaccinated. Hospitalizations have soared. In July, there were 33 patients with COVID across all the St. Luke's hospitals. This week, there were 289. Currently, more than two-thirds of all patients in St. Luke’s facilities are being treated for the same virus, Jim Souza, St. Luke’s chief physician executive, told reporters in an online briefing on Tuesday.

“That’s an unprecedented event in modern medicine,” he said.

Idaho is what a state looks like when it fails to flatten the curve. As in other Mountain States, beds are running out. In response to the crush of patients, which is not expected to slow anytime soon, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) last week activated crisis standards of care. When implemented by hospitals, these plans, first formulated in April 2020 with the hope they would rarely need to be used, help guide overwhelmed medical workers on how to ration scarce resources.

The crisis standards apply to all patients — not just those with COVID-19. “There are already many patients who’ve had to delay surgery or other treatments, and if you end up in a hospital, you may receive treatment in a waiting room or a hallway,” said DHW Director Dave Jeppesen. “Each nurse and doctor will be taking care of more patients than usual. You may have to wait much longer than normal for care. You may even have to be transferred to a care facility that could be hours away.”

Last Thursday, the day the crisis standards were first activated, one older adult came into a hospital after she suffered a stroke. In normal times, she would be held overnight for monitoring, but instead she was discharged that same day. The woman was Jeppesen’s own mother.

“Not only was it stressful that my mom had a stroke, there was added worry about the availability of healthcare when she went to the ER,” he said. “Things were different in the ER. There were other patients receiving care in the waiting area.”

If things truly reach their worst in Idaho, the crisis standards guide doctors in triaging which patients receive care and which won’t. They involve a complex calculation of health factors in order to save the most lives possible. In the event of a tie, doctors may have to resort to a lottery system. Hospitals may even institute a universal do-not-resuscitate order for all patients who suffer cardiac arrest — although this has not yet happened in Idaho and would never apply to children.

Susie Keller, the CEO of the Idaho Medical Association, told BuzzFeed News she’s been hearing nightmarish stories from members who are beginning to confront these rationing decisions — about who gets an ICU bed, a COVID patient or someone with cardiac arrest.

“It’s not a sudden nightmare. It’s a nightmare we’ve seen coming, and our physicians have been warning about this,” Keller said. “We have not yet hit our peak.”

Souza, the St. Luke’s chief physician, said his network has already mobilized teams to assist clinicians in making “very morally challenging decisions.” He’s not aware of any patients who’ve died yet because of rationed care, but he thinks it’s just a matter of time. “I do not know the names of any such people yet, but I do believe we will know their names,” he said.

As the Delta variant of the coronavirus tears through Idaho and the rest of the US, Souza said he and his St. Luke’s colleagues have noticed several important differences from the December 2020 surge. Patients are younger (averaging 58 years old, down from 72), they are sicker and require more mechanical ventilation, they are staying in the ICU longer, and they are dying more frequently (the ICU mortality rate has jumped from 28% to 43%). Some 80 people have died from COVID in St. Luke’s hospitals in just the past three weeks.

“In a really morbid exercise, just in the month of September, if you look at the ages of the people we have lost and you apply to them average lifespans, we have lost more than 1,100 life years,” Souza said. “Can you imagine that? And for the people who say, ‘We all die sometime.’ Yes, we do. But these people didn’t need to die now. They didn’t need to die like this.

“Can you imagine all the life and experience contained within those 1,100 years?”

Medical groups in Idaho have pleaded with residents to get vaccinated but have been met with resistance among many in the deeply conservative state — a symptom of the politicization of the vaccines by some on the right. Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, received a COVID vaccination he dubbed “safe and effective” in January, but months later he signed — like other conservative governors across the country — an executive order banning state officials from requiring residents to get vaccinated in order to access facilities. Citing the need for “fewer government regulations,” this month Little also stated he would challenge plans from President Joe Biden to require US companies with more than 100 employees to mandate either a vaccine or routine testing for staff.

Misinformation is also rampant. Republicans in one county that includes Boise this month voted to appoint a fringe doctor who has called vaccines “fake” to a regional health board. Elsewhere, a home healthcare nurse who watched false conspiracy theory videos on YouTube told her family not to get vaccinated, even as their mother was in a coma with COVID. The nurse then became infected herself and died last month. Her mother has recovered, but has said she is still not certain whether she will take a shot.

The charged environment has left medical workers feeling abandoned and even resented for continuing to advocate for health measures the public no longer seems interested in. “The good wishes from the beginning of the pandemic feel like they’ve all but dried up,” said Souza, whose 15-bed clinic in the resort town of McCall was defaced with a swastika over the weekend.

Kenneth Krell, a doctor in an Idaho Falls hospital, told the Idaho Statesman that the early days of the pandemic when he and his colleagues were applauded as heroes are long gone.

“I think we all have some commonality that the public [is no longer] our allies,” Krell told the newspaper. “But, in instances that are surprising, patients sometimes have some real hostility. They say they couldn’t have COVID, that this is all a lie, even as we’re getting ready to intubate them.”

Carvalho, the Boise doctor, said she now compares medical workers to Vietnam War veterans, who saw the public turn against them. “We’re tired of being pointed fingers at, of being called the bad guy, for trying to promote a vaccine that is lifesaving,” Carvalho said. “I know there’s good people out there, but it really does feel like the public is not on our side.”

Even primary care providers who’ve looked after a patient’s family for 20 years are now hearing they are no longer trusted, according to Keller with the Idaho Medical Association. At work, Idaho medical workers face an onslaught of unnecessary death, she said, but outside they’re part of a community of people who act as if the pandemic doesn’t exist. “It’s pretty disheartening,” she said. “Think they feel like they’re living in two different worlds.”

In Idaho Falls, Krell was driving into work on a recent Saturday and felt beleaguered. He’d received a call that the ICU was overwhelmed, and even though it was his day off and he’d been working shifts of 36 hours, he got in his car and headed in. He knew his colleagues would, too.

When he arrived at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, he stopped in front of a whiteboard and wrote a message for his coworkers — which later went viral when it was shared on social media.

“In the end what sustains us, and what we will remember about having survived this madness, are the remarkable people who endured this with us, the best of humanity — all of us — who demonstrated the best of our calling,” he wrote. “We endured this together, and supported each other. We saved lives and lost lives, and we did both with compassion and competence.

“We will not forget this.”

 

[Brisketexan 106909]

^^^^

We are such a shit species.

[JimmyJames 12271]

9 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/idaho-covid-crisis-standards-care?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

 

 

 

 

  Hide contents

Carvalho and her colleagues cannot fathom how they’ve ended up in this situation. She has anger — certainly — but that requires too much energy. She’s mostly just sad and burned out.

“I think it’s just kind of a hopeless feeling,” she told BuzzFeed News after finishing her shift on Tuesday evening. “Last year at this time, I was very anxious about COVID, and I was just hoping and hoping for the day when we’d have a vaccine. It never occurred to me that there would be a day when we have a vaccine, and I’m actually more anxious now because we have something that can really prevent this and people aren’t taking it.”

The selfie Ashley Carvalho took during her particularly difficult night shift.

Currently, 50 of the 51 COVID patients in ICUs part of the St. Luke's Health System — a chain covering southeastern Idaho, eastern Oregon, and northern Nevada — are unvaccinated. Hospitalizations have soared. In July, there were 33 patients with COVID across all the St. Luke's hospitals. This week, there were 289. Currently, more than two-thirds of all patients in St. Luke’s facilities are being treated for the same virus, Jim Souza, St. Luke’s chief physician executive, told reporters in an online briefing on Tuesday.

“That’s an unprecedented event in modern medicine,” he said.

Idaho is what a state looks like when it fails to flatten the curve. As in other Mountain States, beds are running out. In response to the crush of patients, which is not expected to slow anytime soon, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) last week activated crisis standards of care. When implemented by hospitals, these plans, first formulated in April 2020 with the hope they would rarely need to be used, help guide overwhelmed medical workers on how to ration scarce resources.

The crisis standards apply to all patients — not just those with COVID-19. “There are already many patients who’ve had to delay surgery or other treatments, and if you end up in a hospital, you may receive treatment in a waiting room or a hallway,” said DHW Director Dave Jeppesen. “Each nurse and doctor will be taking care of more patients than usual. You may have to wait much longer than normal for care. You may even have to be transferred to a care facility that could be hours away.”

Last Thursday, the day the crisis standards were first activated, one older adult came into a hospital after she suffered a stroke. In normal times, she would be held overnight for monitoring, but instead she was discharged that same day. The woman was Jeppesen’s own mother.

“Not only was it stressful that my mom had a stroke, there was added worry about the availability of healthcare when she went to the ER,” he said. “Things were different in the ER. There were other patients receiving care in the waiting area.”

If things truly reach their worst in Idaho, the crisis standards guide doctors in triaging which patients receive care and which won’t. They involve a complex calculation of health factors in order to save the most lives possible. In the event of a tie, doctors may have to resort to a lottery system. Hospitals may even institute a universal do-not-resuscitate order for all patients who suffer cardiac arrest — although this has not yet happened in Idaho and would never apply to children.

Susie Keller, the CEO of the Idaho Medical Association, told BuzzFeed News she’s been hearing nightmarish stories from members who are beginning to confront these rationing decisions — about who gets an ICU bed, a COVID patient or someone with cardiac arrest.

“It’s not a sudden nightmare. It’s a nightmare we’ve seen coming, and our physicians have been warning about this,” Keller said. “We have not yet hit our peak.”

Souza, the St. Luke’s chief physician, said his network has already mobilized teams to assist clinicians in making “very morally challenging decisions.” He’s not aware of any patients who’ve died yet because of rationed care, but he thinks it’s just a matter of time. “I do not know the names of any such people yet, but I do believe we will know their names,” he said.

As the Delta variant of the coronavirus tears through Idaho and the rest of the US, Souza said he and his St. Luke’s colleagues have noticed several important differences from the December 2020 surge. Patients are younger (averaging 58 years old, down from 72), they are sicker and require more mechanical ventilation, they are staying in the ICU longer, and they are dying more frequently (the ICU mortality rate has jumped from 28% to 43%). Some 80 people have died from COVID in St. Luke’s hospitals in just the past three weeks.

“In a really morbid exercise, just in the month of September, if you look at the ages of the people we have lost and you apply to them average lifespans, we have lost more than 1,100 life years,” Souza said. “Can you imagine that? And for the people who say, ‘We all die sometime.’ Yes, we do. But these people didn’t need to die now. They didn’t need to die like this.

“Can you imagine all the life and experience contained within those 1,100 years?”

Medical groups in Idaho have pleaded with residents to get vaccinated but have been met with resistance among many in the deeply conservative state — a symptom of the politicization of the vaccines by some on the right. Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, received a COVID vaccination he dubbed “safe and effective” in January, but months later he signed — like other conservative governors across the country — an executive order banning state officials from requiring residents to get vaccinated in order to access facilities. Citing the need for “fewer government regulations,” this month Little also stated he would challenge plans from President Joe Biden to require US companies with more than 100 employees to mandate either a vaccine or routine testing for staff.

Misinformation is also rampant. Republicans in one county that includes Boise this month voted to appoint a fringe doctor who has called vaccines “fake” to a regional health board. Elsewhere, a home healthcare nurse who watched false conspiracy theory videos on YouTube told her family not to get vaccinated, even as their mother was in a coma with COVID. The nurse then became infected herself and died last month. Her mother has recovered, but has said she is still not certain whether she will take a shot.

The charged environment has left medical workers feeling abandoned and even resented for continuing to advocate for health measures the public no longer seems interested in. “The good wishes from the beginning of the pandemic feel like they’ve all but dried up,” said Souza, whose 15-bed clinic in the resort town of McCall was defaced with a swastika over the weekend.

Kenneth Krell, a doctor in an Idaho Falls hospital, told the Idaho Statesman that the early days of the pandemic when he and his colleagues were applauded as heroes are long gone.

“I think we all have some commonality that the public [is no longer] our allies,” Krell told the newspaper. “But, in instances that are surprising, patients sometimes have some real hostility. They say they couldn’t have COVID, that this is all a lie, even as we’re getting ready to intubate them.”

Carvalho, the Boise doctor, said she now compares medical workers to Vietnam War veterans, who saw the public turn against them. “We’re tired of being pointed fingers at, of being called the bad guy, for trying to promote a vaccine that is lifesaving,” Carvalho said. “I know there’s good people out there, but it really does feel like the public is not on our side.”

Even primary care providers who’ve looked after a patient’s family for 20 years are now hearing they are no longer trusted, according to Keller with the Idaho Medical Association. At work, Idaho medical workers face an onslaught of unnecessary death, she said, but outside they’re part of a community of people who act as if the pandemic doesn’t exist. “It’s pretty disheartening,” she said. “Think they feel like they’re living in two different worlds.”

In Idaho Falls, Krell was driving into work on a recent Saturday and felt beleaguered. He’d received a call that the ICU was overwhelmed, and even though it was his day off and he’d been working shifts of 36 hours, he got in his car and headed in. He knew his colleagues would, too.

When he arrived at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, he stopped in front of a whiteboard and wrote a message for his coworkers — which later went viral when it was shared on social media.

“In the end what sustains us, and what we will remember about having survived this madness, are the remarkable people who endured this with us, the best of humanity — all of us — who demonstrated the best of our calling,” he wrote. “We endured this together, and supported each other. We saved lives and lost lives, and we did both with compassion and competence.

“We will not forget this.”

 

Hey at least GRUHorn got paid his 50 rubles an hour! That’s almost a buck an hour! Spreading disinformation is pretty cheap. 

[Bama Chick 28596]

Just got my third shot booster!



I’m all antibody up for my Harry Styles concert next week.

I’ve been waiting for this for 18 months. Everyone has to be vaxxed or negative test within 48 hours of the show and masks must be worn.

Part of me feels like a hypocrite but gotdamnit I’ve done the right thing and then some. I deserve this.

[hookemATL 12291]

That article is soul shattering.  Unlimited rep to all the healthcare peeps out there just trying to save us from ourselves, as futile as that may seem at times.

[Biff Tannen 46168]

2 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Just got my third shot booster!



I’m all antibody up for my Harry Styles concert next week.

I’ve been waiting for this for 18 months. Everyone has to be vaxxed or negative test within 48 hours of the show and masks must be worn.

Part of me feels like a hypocrite but gotdamnit I’ve done the right thing and then some. I deserve this.

Going to my first indoor show (Emo's) on Sunday.  I've been to COTA and 3Ten, which basically opens onto the street, but this will be my first truly enclosed venture.  Glad I have 3 shots and natural antibodies on top of it.  

[Anastasis 23721]

5 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Part of me feels like a hypocrite but gotdamnit I’ve done the right thing and then some. I deserve this.

Why would you feel like a hypocrite? That's crazy talk.  Nobody doing the right thing should feel bad about acting like a social human. 

Edited September 23, 2021 by Anastasis

[Francisco 2.0 32598]

After I posted that Buzzfeed article, I left work for the day.  On the way home, I'm thinking about the article, and it occurred to me (and I'm probably far from the only person to have this thought).

We as a society are thisclose to having someone deranged over the treatment (or death) of a loved one from Covid at a hospital, and just coming back and opening fire on whoever happens to be standing in the way.  I guess I'm so jaded that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, to be honest.   

 

 

[Bama Chick 28596]

Eh I know it’s not rational.

It’s a mixture of guilt and feeling hypocritical that I’ve been begging other folks to do the right thing.

But I’m going and I’m going to dance my ass off.

I’ve got front row pit tickets and a super cute outfit. Harry better be ready.

[pacman 7508]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

^^^^

We are such a shit species.

Florida: I see that and raise you...

 

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/458805-diaz-review-vaccine-mandates/

Quote

His work could include revisiting existing vaccine requirements long in place in schools

 

[Bookman 4764]

19 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

After I posted that Buzzfeed article, I left work for the day.  On the way home, I'm thinking about the article, and it occurred to me (and I'm probably far from the only person to have this thought).

We as a society are thisclose to having someone deranged over the treatment (or death) of a loved one from Covid at a hospital, and just coming back and opening fire on whoever happens to be standing in the way.  I guess I'm so jaded that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, to be honest.   

 

 

This is the United States. We've been *thisclose* for decades.

[Nivek 17415]

^^^^
We are such a shit species.

Nah. We just have shitty people who are prone to violence because they are stupid and have been manipulated to thinking this is acceptable behavior.

Is the person who threatened the nurse in jail and now denied access to all firearms?

This is the fun part about kids. When they are young you get to watch them find joy in the simplest stuff we have long forgotten about.

[sidis 10018]

2 minutes ago, pacman said:

Florida: I see that and raise you...

 

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/458805-diaz-review-vaccine-mandates/

 

manny diaz?  fucking sucked as a d.c. for us, is continuing to utterly destroy miami's program, and i had no idea that he was actively trying to turn florida into a sub-saharan african state that is going to need global intervention for health crisis.

[Nivek 17415]

This is the United States. We've been *thisclose* for decades.

Hell we left this close behind a long time ago. But hey more guns and less regulation for all.

[Foosters 18284]

31 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

After I posted that Buzzfeed article, I left work for the day.  On the way home, I'm thinking about the article, and it occurred to me (and I'm probably far from the only person to have this thought).

We as a society are thisclose to having someone deranged over the treatment (or death) of a loved one from Covid at a hospital, and just coming back and opening fire on whoever happens to be standing in the way.  I guess I'm so jaded that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, to be honest.   

 

 

I keep waiting for this to happen in California. It's hard to overstate the anger and resentment emanating from the rural parts of the state. Now that the recall has been defeated they see the socialist takeover of the state to be a fait accompli. Just take the most vile, hate-filled GQP folks you can think of, then stick them in CA and imagine what would happen.

[Bama Chick 28596]

We’ve had special drills for the very scenario of a gunman coming in mad about masks or vaccines or what have you.

[conVINCEd 21477]

Just now, Bama Chick said:

We’ve had special drills for the very scenario of a gunman coming in mad about masks or vaccines or what have you.

Backside of the MRI machine is probably a good place to avoid catching a stray bullet.

[JimmyJames 12271]

16 minutes ago, Foosters said:

I keep waiting for this to happen in California. It's hard to overstate the anger and resentment emanating from the rural parts of the state. Now that the recall has been defeated they see the socialist takeover of the state to be a fait accompli. Just take the most vile, hate-filled GQP folks you can think of, then stick them in CA and imagine what would happen.

The rural parts of California have been getting overruled by the California cities for many decades now. What are the okies wearing oakleys gonna do? Ride up there in jet skies with pitchforks?

Edited September 23, 2021 by JimmyJames

[Brisketexan 106909]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

After I posted that Buzzfeed article, I left work for the day.  On the way home, I'm thinking about the article, and it occurred to me (and I'm probably far from the only person to have this thought).

We as a society are thisclose to having someone deranged over the treatment (or death) of a loved one from Covid at a hospital, and just coming back and opening fire on whoever happens to be standing in the way.  I guess I'm so jaded that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, to be honest.   

 

 

The fact that it hasn't happened yet makes me think there's some sort of glitch in this simulation.  It absolutely should have happened by now.

[Foosters 18284]

18 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

The rural parts of California have been getting overruled by the California cities for many decades now. What are the okies wearing oakleys gonna do? Ride up there in jet skies with pitchforks?

Remember the Whitmire kidnap and murder plot? 

Something like that. Or bombing gov buildings, or targeting figures on the left. Hopefully they'll just all move to Texas and complete the state's race to the bottom.

But you know better than to compare today's current climate with what has been happening in the past.

[DDD Dad 14653]

Going to my first indoor show (Emo's) on Sunday.  I've been to COTA and 3Ten, which basically opens onto the street, but this will be my first truly enclosed venture.  Glad I have 3 shots and natural antibodies on top of it.  

We declined a last minute invite to floor seats the Eagles concert at the AA Center earlier this week.

[NWBuck 8629]

Just now, DDD Dad said:

We declined a last minute invite to floor seats the Eagles concert at the AA Center earlier this week.

Same...

[heso 2863]

My friend in Florida just got this email.

[Bookman 4764]

Do symptom-free children not spread the virus?

[Brisketexan 106909]

Do symptom-free children not spread the virus?

Not in magical-thinking land.

[Dnaguy 12632]

4 minutes ago, Bookman said:

Do symptom-free children not spread the virus?

 

I mean, there’s just know way to know or tell.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Dnaguy

[Pancho 46327]