8 ms·

Almost no areas are seeing above-average utilization of hospital or ICU beds. It’s a media narrative that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. ICUs routinely run at 90

by irq11 6y ago

Almost no areas are seeing above-average utilization of hospital or ICU beds. It’s a media narrative that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. ICUs routinely run at 90% capacity during the winter. Right now, most states are below this.

ashtonkem 6y ago
You made this same argument here about 80,000 deaths ago.
- irq11 6y ago
  Don’t know who you think you’re talking to, or why you think this is a rebuttal to a factual statement. Hospital utilization is pretty much in line with seasonal levels: https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1327740997078380544 https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/13277409970783... https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-capacity https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-capacity You have to cherry-pick individual hospitals to create the narrative that “hospitals are overwhelmed”....which is exactly what the news media has been doing.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I'm talking to you, that much should have been obvious. You made an extremely similar argument months ago, about how ICU capacity was actually not high and that the media was blowing this out of proportion. That you're still trying to downplay all of this as 3,000 Americans die every day is pretty surprising even to me.
    - irq11 6y ago
      If you’re arguing that I’m consistent and factual, then I give up. You got me. ICU capacity wasn’t abnormal months ago. I just provided you with evidence of that. It isn’t abnormal now, either. Stop it with the hysteria about raw death counts. Do you even know what percentage of those “3,000 people a day” are dying with Covid as a secondary or tertiary cause? (hint: most of them.) Here’s another inconvenient fact: did you know that we’ve had over 100,000 excess deaths in 2020 that have nothing to do with Covid? Over 37,000 of them were from Alzheimer disease and dementia, alone. Golly...that’s...2,000 deaths a week! Or about 1/3rd of all excess deaths this year. https://cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm (click “Total number above average by cause”, and update the dashboard)
      - TomSwirly 6y ago
        So your argument is that the 300,000+ excess American deaths in 2020 are caused by... what? It saddens me to see so many people such as yourself fighting on the side of COVID-19 against humanity.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        A particularly lethal form of media hysteria, apparently.
        irq11 6y ago
        what an intellectually compelling rebuttal. when you have no counterargument, you resort to insults and mockery.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        It's a summary of your repeated arguments in this thread and other threads. If that's an insult to you, then I don't think it's me that you should be angry at. > you resort to insults and mockery > But sure, go be “sad” about people sharing documented facts, instead. It’s much easier than critical thought, and it lets you feel morally superior. I can see why you prefer it. Practice what you preach.
        irq11 6y ago
        The comment I was replying to was doing exactly what you’re doing: responding to cited facts with pettiness. Any information that contradicts your opinions is met with mockery and moralizing judgment.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        irq11 6y ago
        Well, I just showed you, per the CDC’s own numbers, that a third of those had nothing to do with Covid. A reasonable person might then ask your question, but look for answers that involve something a little more intellectually rigorous than morally scolding strangers. For example: it’s seeming quite likely that our extreme, panicked reaction to this illness has killed a huge number of people. How many more will die due to postponed cancer screenings, surgeries, and so on? How many children will be set back in their education, permanently? How many minority and low-income families will be carelessly tossed into generational poverty? How does that number weigh against the people who have died from this virus? Have you even given it a second thought? But sure, go be “sad” about people sharing documented facts, instead. It’s much easier than critical thought, and it lets you feel morally superior. I can see why you prefer it.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Almost no areas are seeing above-average utilization of hospital or ICU beds. That's not really relevant to what I'm talking about, though. COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU utilization (and deaths) are surging with the expected lag behind new cases, which wouldn't be expected if the new case surge was an illusion from, e.g., symptomatic colds leading people to get tested and discovering what would otherwise have passed as asymptomatic COVID-19 cases. Whether the overall hospital or ICU utilization is seasonally high is a different issue.
- irq11 6y ago
  I’m not arguing that there’s not a “case surge”. If you test everyone who walks in a hospital door (which we are), you’re going to find “cases”. If you did this with influenza, you’d find the same thing. People go in to the ER for a broken leg, have a positive covid test, and get counted as a covid admission. This isn’t fiction: multiple state health departments have admitted it is happening. It’s too difficult to try to determine if Covid is “the reason” for an admission, so nobody tries. Therefore, the only important question is: how are hospitals faring relative to any other year? And so far, the answer is that it looks like a moderately bad flu season. To hype the narrative that “hospitals are overwhelmed”, the news media routinely cherry-picks one or two hospitals, fixates on them for a week, then moves on to the next. https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1327740997078380544 https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/13277409970783...

by irq11 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

You made this same argument here about 80,000 deaths ago.

irq11 6y ago
Don’t know who you think you’re talking to, or why you think this is a rebuttal to a factual statement. Hospital utilization is pretty much in line with seasonal levels: https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1327740997078380544 https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/13277409970783... https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-capacity https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-capacity You have to cherry-pick individual hospitals to create the narrative that “hospitals are overwhelmed”....which is exactly what the news media has been doing.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I'm talking to you, that much should have been obvious. You made an extremely similar argument months ago, about how ICU capacity was actually not high and that the media was blowing this out of proportion. That you're still trying to downplay all of this as 3,000 Americans die every day is pretty surprising even to me.
  - irq11 6y ago
    If you’re arguing that I’m consistent and factual, then I give up. You got me. ICU capacity wasn’t abnormal months ago. I just provided you with evidence of that. It isn’t abnormal now, either. Stop it with the hysteria about raw death counts. Do you even know what percentage of those “3,000 people a day” are dying with Covid as a secondary or tertiary cause? (hint: most of them.) Here’s another inconvenient fact: did you know that we’ve had over 100,000 excess deaths in 2020 that have nothing to do with Covid? Over 37,000 of them were from Alzheimer disease and dementia, alone. Golly...that’s...2,000 deaths a week! Or about 1/3rd of all excess deaths this year. https://cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm (click “Total number above average by cause”, and update the dashboard)
    - TomSwirly 6y ago
      So your argument is that the 300,000+ excess American deaths in 2020 are caused by... what? It saddens me to see so many people such as yourself fighting on the side of COVID-19 against humanity.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        A particularly lethal form of media hysteria, apparently.
        irq11 6y ago
        what an intellectually compelling rebuttal. when you have no counterargument, you resort to insults and mockery.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        It's a summary of your repeated arguments in this thread and other threads. If that's an insult to you, then I don't think it's me that you should be angry at. > you resort to insults and mockery > But sure, go be “sad” about people sharing documented facts, instead. It’s much easier than critical thought, and it lets you feel morally superior. I can see why you prefer it. Practice what you preach.
        irq11 6y ago
        The comment I was replying to was doing exactly what you’re doing: responding to cited facts with pettiness. Any information that contradicts your opinions is met with mockery and moralizing judgment.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - irq11 6y ago
        Well, I just showed you, per the CDC’s own numbers, that a third of those had nothing to do with Covid. A reasonable person might then ask your question, but look for answers that involve something a little more intellectually rigorous than morally scolding strangers. For example: it’s seeming quite likely that our extreme, panicked reaction to this illness has killed a huge number of people. How many more will die due to postponed cancer screenings, surgeries, and so on? How many children will be set back in their education, permanently? How many minority and low-income families will be carelessly tossed into generational poverty? How does that number weigh against the people who have died from this virus? Have you even given it a second thought? But sure, go be “sad” about people sharing documented facts, instead. It’s much easier than critical thought, and it lets you feel morally superior. I can see why you prefer it.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Almost no areas are seeing above-average utilization of hospital or ICU beds. That's not really relevant to what I'm talking about, though. COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU utilization (and deaths) are surging with the expected lag behind new cases, which wouldn't be expected if the new case surge was an illusion from, e.g., symptomatic colds leading people to get tested and discovering what would otherwise have passed as asymptomatic COVID-19 cases. Whether the overall hospital or ICU utilization is seasonally high is a different issue.

irq11 6y ago
I’m not arguing that there’s not a “case surge”. If you test everyone who walks in a hospital door (which we are), you’re going to find “cases”. If you did this with influenza, you’d find the same thing. People go in to the ER for a broken leg, have a positive covid test, and get counted as a covid admission. This isn’t fiction: multiple state health departments have admitted it is happening. It’s too difficult to try to determine if Covid is “the reason” for an admission, so nobody tries. Therefore, the only important question is: how are hospitals faring relative to any other year? And so far, the answer is that it looks like a moderately bad flu season. To hype the narrative that “hospitals are overwhelmed”, the news media routinely cherry-picks one or two hospitals, fixates on them for a week, then moves on to the next. https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1327740997078380544 https://mobile.twitter.com/justin_hart/status/13277409970783...