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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAn extremely strong warning from an ER doctor about COVID-19
Link to tweet
Link to tweet
https://vfrl.org/
PRESIDENT
Dan was born in Maine and lived his childhood in New England. He attended the United States Naval Academy and graduated in May 2001. He served 7 years on active duty as a member of Naval Special Warfare and completed multiple combat tours.
Upon leaving active duty he attended Harvard Medical School and then completed an Emergency Medicine Residency training program at the University of New Mexico. He is now a faculty member and Emergency Medicine doctor at the University of Vermont, and the father of three small girls.
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Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)The Republicans should be forced to get this situation turned around...not on January 20th.
One of the Dakotas announced that they have so many people sick they can't keep up...people suffocating around them...
Pence goes on vacation, Trump is in a fetal position and McConnell is telling everyone to humor him. My God!
We DO need a coup if they can't get their act together.
AZ8theist
(5,459 posts)octoberlib
(14,971 posts)We'll see numbers we never thought were possible because families are going to congregate for dinner in one house, won't wear masks and one person will walk in and infect the whole house. Thanksgiving is the most traveled holiday of the year. More than Christmas.
hatrack
(59,584 posts)This is nothing more than spitballing on my part, but I'm really curious as to how the pandemic plays out over the next couple of months.
1. Right Now - Worldometers has total US deaths at 244,811 at this writing, with 10,448,712 total cases. Yesterday was the sixth straight day of new case totals of 100,000 or more. Weekday death totals have been at or above 1,000 since late October, with lower weekend totals an artifact of the reporting process.
Infection rates and hospital capacity vary from state to state and region to region, depending on the public health response, government restrictions and public acceptance of quarantine measures. So, for example, in Wisconsin, 6 of the 7 regions reported increases in COVID hospitalization rates ranging from 18% to 55% between October 21st and November 3rd (one region did not report). North Dakota hospitals are at 100% capacity, and hospitals have canceled all elective surgeries thanks to staffing shortfalls. Vermont, OTOH, reports 46 new cases, 12 hospitalized and 3 in ICU statewide.
Obviously, where you are will determine much as 2020 draws to a close.
2. Thanksgiving - Since the conventional Republican wisdom is that COVID ceased to exist on November 4th since it's just a conspiracy anyway, I have little difficulty imagining that the virus did precisely that as far as denizens of the Deniosphere are concerned. Many of its residents will act accordingly two weeks from now as they head over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house. We'll crack 250,000 total dead nationally well before that, but that probably won't make much of an impression. 2,000 daily fatalities during the spring pandemic peak couldn't change their minds, so less than that won't make a ripple. What will matter will be what we're looking at about a month later.
3. Christmas - With hundreds of millions of individual person-to-person contacts likely nationally over the long Thanksgiving weekend, a spike seems very possible by two weeks later, not quite to mid-December. Could daily death tolls surpass the spring spike centered in the Northeast? Potentially, particularly since COVID denial seems heavily concentrated in the Plains, the northern Rockies and the Deep South - all areas that are, if not sparsely populated, then sparsely equipped with hospital capacity. Something of an argument against that would be the improved nursing and medical skills for dealing with COVID gained at great cost in cities like New York and Boston early this year, with those skills providing better patient outcomes. But with multiple states' medical systems already straining under the COVID load, access will be more important than therapies or therapeutics. And, of course, since it's Christmas, at least a chunk of MAGA Nation will go right on pretending, though that wont' be enough for a cratering Christmas shopping season.
4. Inauguration - 350,000 dead by the time Biden takes the oath of office? 400,000? It seems entirely possible. The only rock-bottom confidence I have is that President Pantload and his administration will do nothing - zero - to take effective action on the pandemic between now and 1/20/21. It is, after all, far more important to distract Orange Julius Caesar with binky, rattle and porn than it is to remind him of his "responsibilities".
Come January 21st, of course, COVID will suddenly be remembered as the howler monkeys of the right scream about Biden's negligence in letting the virus wreck the economy of 'Murka and kill so many of us over the last four years, a scream that will continue for the next four years.
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)states without a Democratic Governor are going to be awful. Sadly, I also think some liberal families who know better will get together for the holidays because it's family.
iluvtennis
(19,852 posts)I'm going to take quite a bit of shit by not participating in holiday events with family. Some of them are Trump weirdos!
Fuck em! I'll sit home home with my Charlie Brown tree and watch movies
hatrack
(59,584 posts)Don't really give a damn what the in-laws think any more. Haven't much cared for years now.
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)...which will stop this thing in its tracks. It really depends on how available Eli Lilly can make those drugs.
I expect the death rate to reduce (though I believe long term effects are still going to be wide reaching).
JudyM
(29,236 posts)joshcryer
(62,270 posts)The Mouth
(3,149 posts)yonder
(9,664 posts)central scrutinizer
(11,648 posts)Malls will be super spreader sites
LaMouffette
(2,030 posts)Typhoid Trump is run out of the White House.
I wish they would also start an ad campaign against misinformation on Facebook and other social media.
Blues Heron
(5,931 posts)Mask up or suffer the consequences.
Mr.Bill
(24,284 posts)has been saying for months that we will never hear about the virus again starting November 4th.
AZ8theist
(5,459 posts)So there is that........
Mr.Bill
(24,284 posts)Hunter Biden's laptop.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)Ilsa
(61,695 posts)Since we are still hearing about COVID-19 after Nov. 3, the trumpers have moved that date back to January 20, 2021. (A DUer wrote up a conversation she overheard several days ago.)
dflprincess
(28,075 posts)last Friday they were having to divert ambulances because the ER was so busy, mostly with Covid and suspected Covid cases. She said they had had a lull during the summer - had even been able to close a couple Covid wards - but things have been ramping up over the last few weeks. She didn't know if these were just metro area cases or if it was cases from rural Minnesota as well.
I haven't heard from her since last weekend so I don't know how this week is going.
Rebl2
(13,498 posts)last week in the Kansas City, MO region, the hospitals here were getting requests from hospitals 4-5 hours away from here to send their patients to KC. They had to say no, because ICUs here are filling up with our own residents. Unfortunately doctors cant seem to get through to people wear a damn mask.
Blue_playwright
(1,568 posts)hatrack
(59,584 posts)142 patients county-wide hospitalized w. COVID, 49 in ICU, 21 on respirators, and Columbia's only about 120,000 population.
Link to tweet
SaintLouisBlues
(1,244 posts)They are shipping in patients from all over the Lower Midwest and the Mid-South. St. Louis has a huge medical infrastructure, which is very near its limit.
Delphinus
(11,830 posts)working from home as much as I can and mask whenever I am out of the house; hubby the same. Still very worried.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)Perhaps theyre not keeping up with the news?
DallasNE
(7,403 posts)The wave is already upon us. Today's number should reflect the 1st day of the in-person voting infections. Watch the next 2-4 days as it could jump a great deal - our first day with over 150,000 new infectons.
And Trump's only activity can be found on Twitter. That won't make Covid go away.
Response to steve2470 (Original post)
DallasNE This message was self-deleted by its author.
Danmel
(4,913 posts)And our cousin, who is a radiation oncologist told him to wait until spring to get treatment in a hospital because Covid is going to blow up big time.
ananda
(28,858 posts)I've been thinking this for a few days now.
Blue Owl
(50,356 posts)Horse with no Name
(33,956 posts)Word going around is that they are going to ask some of us administrative nurses to go to the front lines.
Ive always done that but not this time.
People arent doing what they need to stop this and I am not going to risk my life. Done it way too many times but not this time.