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goDel

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Everything posted by goDel

  1. goDel
    Yeah. Was pleasently surprised by that general ( i believe) that was on rachel maddows show. Yesterday, i believe. Trump even tweeted a clip of that with a thank you to rachel. He can be nice. Under specific circumstances. But it's good to have some visible leadership and process to adress the current issues. And the us military is that thing which could bring some national coordination. That was missing a bit, if you just follow whats coming out of the white house snake pit. If Trumps poll numbers keep rising, he should thank the army. And everybody else showing leadership.
  2. goDel
    Don't know whats worse. Her ignorance, or her fake lips. God, what an airhead.
  3. goDel
    Disagree. You imply that it would be realistic to fund the system such that there wouldn't be any problem under the current (abnormal!!) circumstances. Frankly, it makes no sense to always have this kind of peak capacity available. That's like driving a car with an extra tank on your roof with 1000 liter extra gasoline just in case you unexpectedly need to drive to the other side of the planet. The system in Italy (the northern region) is known as a high quality system. Want to argue that a woefully underfunded system could be high quality? Madness. Also note, if you look at the healthcare system from an economic point of view - and especially hospitals - you see most of the costs are structural (as opposed to variable). Meaning that the costs don't scale with the volume. Whether you treat 100 patients or 1000 patients in a hospital, the yearly budget wouldn't change much. There's a required amount of people that need to work in a hospital and the hospital itself is mostly bricks and a couple of expensive machines. It's by definition a sector with low flexibility in terms of peak capacity. It's not like IT, where you can insta-call in some extra server capacity to keep up with peak demand. And the suggestion that what we're currently seeing is in the same ballpark as "any sort of surge" is crazy as well, btw. Finally, yes margins in hospitals are spread thin. But this is including costs for what has proven to be reasonable peak capacity. Where reasonable means what we have had some kind of experience with in the past, and what you'd expect could happen in the future. What's happening now....nobody would have though this could be possible. Not at this scale and with this speed. This is simply unheard of. What the implications will be for our healthcare systems in the future (eg. in terms of budget) is still not clear, I'd argue. Even with what we're seeing, it's not nearly as obvious as you seem to suggest, I'd argue. We can't buy ourselves out of this. This is generally speaking, of course. Because this might be different for each country. But generally speaking, budgets of healthcare systems is one of those things thats always a discussion. This holds for most, if not all western countries. Some more than others perhaps. But it's more likely all systems have equal peak capacity, regardless of margins. Believe it or not. Reason is that in western countries you could argue there's an equal chance of needing relatively equal amounts of peak capacity. It's not a silly idea to regard it a constant. Which is good btw, as we know hospital systems mostly consist of those structural costs mentioned earlier. So it's relatively straightforward to budget peak capacity. (in the case of being reasonable about it, that is)
  4. goDel
    Read an article in the newspaper about old devisions between blue collar and white collar people being painfully visible again. Because the white collars all seem to be able to work from home. And the blue collars either still need to go to work, or are in risk of losing their job. So getting back on topic, I guess I have a white collar. I can work from home. Which means lots of Zoom or Microsoft Team and the likes. Zoom appears to be the winner. Or rather, it's like watching youtube react videos, but through Zoom and with familiar people. It's a bit of getting used to. But in the end, it's not really that big of a change, I feel. Life goes on. And so does work. Boring, right?
  5. goDel
    Before I watch the video, lets start by observing that the risk that hospitals are currently overrun with people needing treatment (as opposed to people who panic and think they need treatment!!) is very real. Hope we can all agree on this. Now we can have some academic discussion about the cause of death. But whatever the conclusion should be, the fact remains that hospitals are full with people with severe complications. More than usual. So this whole story about is fine and all. But *if* the conclusion is, that this spike in hospital-admissions and mortality is not being caused by COVID19, you'd either have to argue that there isn't a spike in the first place and somehow, for whatever reason, Italy is in panic mode just to fuck us off. Or in other words, this is just business as usual. People die all the time. (good luck with making that argument work) Or, you need to argue there is a spike which just happens to be at the same time this epidemic is around. A coincidence perhaps? And it's a coincidence that it's pretty much regional and incidence appears to spread like a virus? But dear God, no it's not because of Corona because you can only count pneumonia!!! I'm sure there are some academically skilled people who can convincingly argue bananas are straight instead of curved. In the end, I really don't care for the academic aspect of this discussion. To me the reality is the healthcare system is in risk of having to deal with an overload. Not sure if I had this discussion here, or somewhere else, but I'm really not interested in what people or science think about the risk of dying due to COVID19. I'm interested in how we can go back to normal mode. Where there's no risk of overloading the healthcare system. If we're there, I'm happy. Whether or not I could die from COVID19, to me, is as interesting as knowing the risk of getting in an accident when crossing the street. So, about this critical thinking, what would you say we should conclude?
  6. goDel
    Thanks, Darwin! Another idiot bites the dust. Hope this happened before making idiot offspring. Wait, was this poor taste? Euh... O_o ?
  7. goDel
    never heard of them. some kind of onion? or am i missing something? couldn't be bothered to check as it looked like a bunch of elaborated nonsense. might be a poor form of satire, or something. dunno. i think it should be killed with fire.
  8. goDel
    very interesting, thanks! Looks like very poor reporting. Perhaps fake news even. It's true that it's a highly nuanced topic, but the underlying epidemiological definitions would be very clear. And of the upmost importance that it is internationally being applied as good as possible. Otherwise, the data is meaningless and research is useless. You can bet your life that plenty of researchers (and the WHO) have been and are looking at this like hawks. Without knowing the underlying epidemiological definitions, this article is worthless and pure speculation. Perhaps to get people to believe it's all a hoax. Also, the presented argument isn't very strong either. Yes, people don't die "from" Covid-19. They die because of complications related to Covid-19. And especially when comorbidities are involved. If there are comorbidities, it's hard to say whether a person died because of disease X or Y. That's a given. Within the current circumstances though, the question soon becomes whether a patient would have these complications (with this severity) without Covid-19. Here you'd also have an argument about, well, lets say these complications might have existed before Covid-19, but suddenly became much more severe. Resulting in death. There's still an argument here where you could safely argue this death should be counted as Covid-19 related. Because otherwise, the impact of treatment might have been completely different. Here's another mindfucker: if patient X dies of an untreated stroke (no Covid-19). And it's untreated because all physicians were busy treating Covid-19 patients and made a conscious choice not to treat patient X because of this, would you count this death under Covid-19? I'm sure that's a no, but really, this needs some thinking is not obvious when you think about it. it's a no, i'd argue, because you want to assess the risk of dying to covid-19 by counting all patients with covid-19. including those with comorbidities, btw. In short: looks like poor reporting to me.
  9. goDel
    That doesn't sound sympathetic to the pov of Honk Kong and Taiwan, imo. You expect they simply let China run over them? Even if the governments don't formally go into some conflict with China, you'd also have the people. So yeah, you'd most likely end up with a conflict no matter what, I'd argue. People simply wouldn't put up with it. As they'd consider this as much an existential threat as this virus. Some even moreso, perhaps. (as their livelihood is at stake. some would rather be dead than to be locked in some china regime, i'm guessing. and i'm not suggesting this would be a rational kind of reasoning. generally speaking, i'm not expecting people to be behaving rational. i mean, remember those beaches in bondi? that's people reasoning from their own personal livelihoods. in short: yeah conflict.) O, and I'd argue China knows this very well. This wouldn't be the time to push extra millions of people in internment camps to learn about their place in that new chinese society. In the meantime, the resulting situation would greatly increase the risk of this epidemic getting out of control again. I'm not well versed in Chinese governments reasoning, but I suspect they can think of this themselves as well.
  10. goDel
    wait, this isn't...? :S
  11. goDel
    Think I'm on the opposite in this discussion. Given the current context I think it's less likely the scenario you sketch will happen. Less likely than before the virus, that is. Reason is that all countries, including China are coping and dealing with something much bigger than those Honk Kong/Taiwan issues. Even China needs to do everything to keep their own situation under control. In terms of health and safety. But also in terms of economy and implications for the society. Making a move on either Hong Kong or Taiwan would seriously threaten their own efforts to manage the impact of this pandemic. Only the foolish would start some conflict under the given conditions. Not even North Korea would try to take over South Korea, I believe. Although there was this US attack in Iraq a week ago, I guess. So yeah, that's Trump. Trump makes a good example of how to do foolish stuff.
  12. goDel
    Yes! Might be a good explanation of why Italies mortality rate amongst the elderly is higher than Chinas! It's a consequence of the overcrowded healthcare system. Makes complete sense. (still needs to be assessed against the situation in China though, to be definitive. But this is a very valid working-hypothesis, so to speak)
  13. goDel
    The early cases of younger people was also seen in the Netherlands, btw. Although the research/data hasn't been done, I believe this might be a temporal thing where younger people (without comorbidities) tend to seek help sooner than people who are older (and less mobile and/or assertive) or people who already have to cope with some kind of condition making it harder to notice the early symptoms of COVID-19. In other words, I think it's highly likely these early signs of more younger people with conditions is not representative and just a temporary effect caused by various factors. There is some research though where mortality rates of Italy and China are compared. Most interesting result is that it looks like the mortality rates of people older than 70 seem higher in Italy. While the mortality rate for all younger ages are similar in both regions. Not sure what could cause that difference, but it's an interesting difference nonetheless. Seems statistically significant, but haven't studied the publications to be honest.
  14. goDel
    Hope this link works:
  15. goDel
    In case it makes you feel any better, the number of corona deaths per capita is currently higher in the Netherlands than in the US. The Netherlands are third in the international ranking after Italy and Spain. Even Iran scores better. /sadface
  16. goDel
    Haven't read the article, but I'm fairly sure the typical Trump voters haven't really felt the impact yet and consider this a hoax and a load of fake news. This might still be the case in a couple of weeks time. But if US goes the same route Italy has already taken (which it does look like, imo), I expect those ratings to drop. And pretty hard. Might be a month until you see that in the actual polls. Since there's also a delay in those outcomes.
  17. goDel
    BoC stands for Beck on Crack, btw. So the link is basically a given. ;D
  18. goDel
    yes! thansk edit: amber, you're going on my curriculum as a reference! ;D
  19. goDel
    Trump = wussbag
  20. goDel
    Completely agree! Less air-travel. Impact on climate is even bigger than recently thought. They're doing studies where they're looking for new optimal ways to fly. As they've discovered the impact of those lines in the sky is significantly bigger on temperature than the amount of CO2 planes produce. So it might be better to fly at different altitudes with more fuel consumption but less lines in the sky. (please, I'm an idiot. i don't know how to call these in english...)
  21. goDel
    That would be a silver lining!
  22. goDel
    That's it! The US is going to win the race for herd-immunity by a landslide. They'll also win the race for lethal casualties, but... meh...
  23. goDel
    I'm sure she's ..eeeuhh... supported by The Donald.
  24. goDel
    I guess that means OK Boomers wont get treated, from now on? Otherwise, the cure might be worse than the problem itself. Amirite!? Also, after three beer my sense of taste and smell stop exist as well. Does alcohol cause COVID-19? (not that corona joke!... huhuhu)
  25. goDel
    This one's also "fun"
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