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  • "Science is real" --

    Bumper Sticker

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    • That's all the proof we need...
      Shut the fuck up Donny!

      Comment


      • Well...that...and Dr. Fauci...
        Shut the fuck up Donny!

        Comment


        • Calling AA and crash for reality check. I just found a link (below) to a tool that allows you to find the % capacity that a county's hospital's ICUs are filled (I'm assuming system wide and involving more than one facility when that exists). Look at the percent thresholds that are used to color code the map and the description of when a hospital is "concerning" (> 10% capacity), "extreme stress" (>20%), "overwhelmed/overloaded" (>50%).

          I don't get this and it does not comport with my own past hospital experience. I rounded regularly in a rural hospital that had 10 ICU beds with the capacity to add 5 more by conversion. That was never needed but we had plenty of circumstances when there were 5 or more ICU beds occupied (>50%). Admittedly, some of these were medically stable post-op recoveries but there were always 30% of those beds with critical patients needing close nursing follow-up. There was no stress, no panic, no one was overwhelmed.

          Unless I'm just not getting this, the panic due to "dire circumstances" thresholds is grossly over stated in this modle. Accordingly, the implications are terribly misleading.

          Comment?

          COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to strain U.S. hospitals in certain places, while the burden is easing up in other areas. Look up your local hospital to see how it's faring.
          Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.

          Comment


          • Unless I'm reading it wrong, the data shows the total % of ALL hospital beds in a county that's taken up by covid patients, not just ICUs

            Comment


            • Jeff,

              I didnt look at the link. On 4G. Will look at it when back in the land of wifi. We never nationally reported census before so a lot of it is speculation.

              1st) I was regularly placing ICUs on diversion years before there was a Covid-19. That said, with Covid, influenza, and an increase in admissions due to a nearly year-long “procrastination of care” (to avoid going to a clinic, hospital, or doctor’s office out of fear of getting Covid), I have no doubt that patient numbers are elevated over previous daily census average.

              2nd) The labels of “extreme stress” (ect) have a purpose: fear for compliance sake and possibly even as a tangential appeal for more funding. As stated above, things are no doubt more strained with patient load. Throw in the fact that many healthcare workers are “opting out” due to Covid fear and things could be getting dire, but to answer your immediate question: high ICU census numbers in December (>70%) aren’t at all uncommon.
              "The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is sometimes hard to verify their authenticity." -Abraham Lincoln

              Comment


              • Texas can’t block votes cast in other states. Absurdly, it’s trying.

                The Supreme Court is sure to reject this latest attempt to overturn the election.

                President Trump leaves an event at the White House on Tuesday. He says his campaign will join a Texas lawsuit that asks the U.S. Supreme Court to block other states that President-elect Joe Biden won from certifying their results.
                By
                Lisa Marshall Manheim
                Lisa Marshall Manheim is an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a co-author of "The Limits of Presidential Power: A Citizen's Guide to the Law."
                Dec. 9, 2020 at 10:51 a.m. CST
                Add to listIn Texas, Republicans have worked hard to impose burdens on voters — at least, within the state’s own borders. But now they have grander plans. On Tuesday, Texas filed a lawsuit announcing its desire to interfere with voting processes in other states across the country. The lawsuit has no merit. It will fail. The effort though represents a galling expansion of Texas officials’ disregard for voters and the electoral process.
                In anticipation of the 2020 elections, Texas set a plan for its voters. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the plan included shuttering voting locations and refusing to meaningfully expand registration or mail-in voting options. The pandemic, in turn, convinced Texas officials to race into court — but not to ensure that voters could safely cast a ballot. Instead, officials litigated to prevent voters from securing a mail-in ballot for the purpose of avoiding the virus. Republican plaintiffs, including a member of the Texas House of Representatives, tried to convince courts to invalidate the votes of over 100,000 Texans who had voted at outdoor polling locations designed to reduce risks of contagion. Yet another line of litigation saw Texas officials vigorously defending voters’ ability to enter a polling place without wearing a mask. Efforts of this sort will help Texas to retain an ignominious title: hardest state in the country in which to cast a ballot.

                And yet that anti-democratic trophy appears not to be enough. At least, it is not enough for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who seeks to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by suing four swing states that already have certified victories for President-elect Joe Biden. (Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, also a Republican, announced late Tuesday that he was joining the lawsuit, and President Trump claimed Wednesday morning that he too would “be intervening” in the case.) Audaciously, Texas filed these claims directly in the U.S. Supreme Court.

                You don’t have a ‘right’ to a lawyer when you’re trying to steal an election

                The litigation is legally incoherent, factually untethered and based on theories of remedy that fundamentally misunderstand the electoral process. At the core, it is an uninspired retread of the many state-level claims that already have imploded since Nov. 3. Texas has simply delivered these defective claims in an even worse package.

                Among the more novel flaws afflicting this lawsuit is that Texas should not have filed it. Texas does not have standing in federal court to vindicate the voting rights of other states’ voters — much less standing to undercut the rights of those voters. Independently, Texas officials should not have filed these claims directly in the Supreme Court. Filing directly is improper because other courts have been available to hear claims of this nature — and, indeed, other courts have heard and repeatedly rejected them.

                Yet another, separate problem with this lawsuit relates to timing. Even if the claims were otherwise valid, Texas should not have brought them so late in the process. A fundamental principle of election law involves what’s called laches, which is a principle that prevents litigants from filing challenges after an election when they could have been brought beforehand. This principle helps to ensure that voters, when casting their ballots, can rely on the rules set in place. Texas has filed its lawsuit over a month after the 2020 elections — and on the date of the safe harbor deadline, no less, which provides further assurance that Congress will accept the electoral votes of any state that has completed its post-election processes. This lawsuit runs headfirst into a veritable wall of laches.

                To pile on further, the lawsuit demands a particularly inappropriate remedy: that the Supreme Court tell other state legislatures what to do. It appears impossible to square this extraordinary demand with basic constitutional principles, much less the Supreme Court’s recently strengthened conception of states’ rights.

                Trump’s scheme for state legislatures to overturn the election won’t work

                Each of these problems ensures that Texas’s lawsuit will fail. But it would have failed anyway, for the many reasons that so many lawsuits filed after the 2020 elections have failed. Like the others, this lawsuit seeks to invalidate the votes of a wide swath of people: here, some 20 million — 20 million — Americans across four states. And like those other lawsuits, it premises this outrageous request not on an airtight legal theory based on solid evidence, but instead on the opposite. Its substantive legal arguments make no sense. It seems to imply, for example, that the 14th Amendment precludes Wisconsin from using drop boxes and requires Georgia to empower its officials to unilaterally reject ballots. (It does neither.) Many of these arguments, in turn, are based on factual allegations that are inflammatory and not based in reality — and that repeatedly have been debunked. It is telling that the name of the Texas solicitor general, the state official typically in charge of litigation before the Supreme Court, does not appear on these filings at all. One wonders if he was too embarrassed to sign.

                What, then, explains the decision of the state’s attorney general to file such a fundamentally flawed lawsuit? Theories abound. Perhaps Paxton is pandering to voters frustrated with the outcome of the 2020 presidential race. Maybe he is priming the electorate for even more onerous voting restrictions in future elections. It is possible he is engaging in indirect fundraising, or perhaps attempting to curry favor with Trump, who has been casting about desperately for a way to overturn the results of the election he lost. No doubt Paxton is in a tough position himself. He must run for office in two years. In the meantime, he is under indictment for state securities fraud and currently is the subject of a separate criminal investigation into “abuse of office” by the federal government.

                Ultimately, who knows what Paxton’s motivations might be. It is hard to understand why a person in a position of public service, who has taken an oath to defend the Constitution, would challenge an election through an incendiary lawsuit that even he, surely, knows is frivolous — a lawsuit that will do nothing more than inflame, frustrate and confuse. What is clearer is that the litigation will die an ignoble death, just like all the others. The end likely will come by way of a short, dismissive order from the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, that order won’t stop Texas officials from continuing to try to chip away at the democratic process, both at home and beyond.
                I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it on

                Comment


                • Originally posted by AlabamAlum View Post
                  Jeff,

                  I didnt look at the link. On 4G. Will look at it when back in the land of wifi. We never nationally reported census before so a lot of it is speculation.

                  1st) I was regularly placing ICUs on diversion years before there was a Covid-19. That said, with Covid, influenza, and an increase in admissions due to a nearly year-long “procrastination of care” (to avoid going to a clinic, hospital, or doctor’s office out of fear of getting Covid), I have no doubt that patient numbers are elevated over previous daily census average.

                  2nd) The labels of “extreme stress” (ect) have a purpose: fear for compliance sake and possibly even as a tangential appeal for more funding. As stated above, things are no doubt more strained with patient load. Throw in the fact that many healthcare workers are “opting out” due to Covid fear and things could be getting dire, but to answer your immediate question: high ICU census numbers in December (>70%) aren’t at all uncommon.
                  Unless I'm wildly misreading it, the available data at his link doesn't distinguish between ICUs and regular beds at all. It just shows you what % of all hospital beds in a given county or at a specific hospital in that county are currently occupied by covid patients.

                  So for example, I can click on my old county of Lorain in Ohio and see that the Cleveland Clinic's hospital in Avon is currently 95% full and 33% of all beds are taken up by covid patients.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by CGVT View Post
                    Texas can’t block votes cast in other states. Absurdly, it’s trying.

                    The Supreme Court is sure to reject this latest attempt to overturn the election.
                    Why are you anti-science?

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by CGVT View Post
                      Texas can’t block votes cast in other states. Absurdly, it’s trying.

                      The Supreme Court is sure to reject this latest attempt to overturn the election.
                      The Texas AG is under indictment (again) for bribery and other shenanigans. Since he's behind these lawsuits, I'd say he's trying to get himself on the pardon list.


                      https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11...l-allegations/



                      oprah-trump.jpg
                      “Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.” - Groucho Marx

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Dr. Strangelove View Post

                        Unless I'm wildly misreading it, the available data at his link doesn't distinguish between ICUs and regular beds at all. It just shows you what % of all hospital beds in a given county or at a specific hospital in that county are currently occupied by covid patients.

                        So for example, I can click on my old county of Lorain in Ohio and see that the Cleveland Clinic's hospital in Avon is currently 95% full and 33% of all beds are taken up by covid patients.
                        -33% seems kinda high. I know UAB is at *13 or 15% or so - or was the last I spoke to anyone. . I think the hospitals in my area are a bit lower, anyway. Numbers are skewed at smaller hospitals.

                        -This seems like a rough tool. Looking at total patient census now vs total patient census last year at this time would give a better number as to the true impact.


                        *An inpatient with Covid might not be there due to Covid. It's just how it's reported.
                        "The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is sometimes hard to verify their authenticity." -Abraham Lincoln

                        Comment


                        • I said one in four quadrillion, but I meant just a quadrillion.

                          That's one in 1,000,000,000,000,000

                          According to SCIENCE!

                          Who here is anti-science?

                          Comment


                          • Youtube has announced that they are now going to ban content that disputes the election results.

                            youtube%20mouth.jpg?itok=x2lATHGu.jpg

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                            • we have stopped admissions on all elective surgeries

                              I work in ortho so we are only doing emergency no electives

                              we have 35 covids but only 2 on a vent

                              Reviewing the numbers for the county sure looks like a lot of hospitals are > 90 % capacity but < 20% are covid

                              This is the time of year where everybody has paid there deductibles and maybe there doing a bunch of procedures because they met there deductible for the year

                              all i know is we are > 30% covid patients

                              Comment


                              • high ICU census numbers in December (>70%) aren’t at all uncommon.
                                Right. So, one could conclude that, as I offered, the thresholds used in this model to define concerning, extreme stress and overloaded are grossly misleading.

                                DSL, yes, total hospital beds. That even makes the thresholds even more absurd. Care, all levels of it, provided in a standard hospital bed is somewhere around 80% less than the care provided to an ICU patient. As a patient, you might see an MD once a week or once at admission and discharge. You may see a nurse or a medical assistant a couple of times a day, maybe not even that frequently. In the ICU you are almost in constant contact with a care provider. ICU nurses are highly skilled. As AA notes, there's going to be stress on this category of nurse when bed capacity reaches 100% but at 20% capacity? There better not be. Floor nurses and MAs are pretty easy to hire and fill staffing needs. I can see issues with critical care nursing staff given the "opting out thing" coupled with over-all demand but every ER or critical care nurse I worked along side of were some of the most highly motivated and energetic people I knew. None of them ever complained about work-load. Get the mission done was the order of the day.
                                Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.

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