3 ms·

Yeah but you're forgetting this is all lies because government has no other way of extracting $31 or whatever from each citizen. /s

dragontamer 5y ago
If we're bringing up costs... what actually bothers me rather severely is the $2100 price tag per Monoclonal Antibodies treatment. But it works. And people are freaking out about COVID19 so much that its free. Maybe we should start a debate about the moral hazards of giving highly expensive (though effective) COVID19 treatments to population centers who have refused to take the $20 vaccine? ------- If people want the "cheap miracle drug that works", that was dexamethasone, at a price tag of like $15 or so. And the vaccine of course. I don't know why they're going for IVM. As a steroid, its an innately risky treatment (steroids suppress your immune system). But its been shown that the cheap steroid dexamethasone, when used in correct doses, can greatly decrease mortality rates. So yeah, take with assistance of a doctor (to make sure your situation is the right use case), but we already have a "cheap miracle drug" success story here if people just want some hope or optimism in their lives. Dexamethasone was credited for cutting out 50% of deaths or something along that magnitude.
- nradov 5y ago
  Methylprednisolone is more effective than dexamethasone for treating COVID-19 lung injuries. Cost is similar. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252057#sec012 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06045-3 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...
- listless 5y ago
  This is basically the conservative argument that you don’t have a basic right to health care. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. I’m not saying that logic is flawed, but we should at least be consistent. If healthcare is a human right, you can’t then judge my life choices that got me there.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    I lean conservative. Numerous hospitals have reached triage of care. We now have to talk about how to conserve scarce resources. We need to pick "winners and losers". No one likes this discussion, but it must happen. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... * https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-letter.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-l... Now that we're reaching this level of crisis, hospitals are beginning to ration off care. I know the ethicists have theorized the proper ethics to this situation over the past year, but as citizens / voting members of the public, its our job to form an opinion about these ethics think-tanks, and whether or not we should support certain viewpoints or not. Health care cannot "be a right" if we cannot afford said health care for everyone. If we cannot afford health care for everyone (literally not enough hospital beds), some mechanism needs to be used to prioritize who gets care or not. No amount of policy can squeeze blood from a stone: if we don't have enough hospital beds anymore, then we must systematically deny care in some regards. (And whatever system we choose will hopefully be fair) Money, for all of its problems, is an effective prioritization methodology... and simple to understand. You give care to those who can afford it. People always criticize the methodology but in the absence of better choices, I'm going to default to it. I think there's some hypotheticals saying that maybe the vaccinated should have priority (since the unvaccinated are the group who is causing the crisis, we should "punish" the unvaccinated in this regards). I think I can accept that as an answer as a higher priority.
    - somewhereoutth 5y ago
      Meanwhile back in civilisation, healthcare is allocated by need.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        Lets say the hospital is full, as is the case in Alaska Regional Hospital, and then 20 more COVID19 patients come in. 1. You can either kick out some people in beds (making room for the new patients). 2. Or, you turn away the patients (and wish them the best of course). Those are the only two choices. When you're out of beds, you're out of beds. Governors across the country have been pulling in student nurses, and increasing nurse pay to encourage retired nurses back into the hospitals. But eventually, you run out of nurses / beds / resources, and run up against this hard limit. We have an ability to magically summon new nurses, but all those abilities have been used up by now (we had a nursing shortage _before_ COVID19 happened after all) The correct answer, from an "ethics" perspective, is to be ready for the situation, and ethically prioritize the different cases. But all of them "need" the hospital bed. But the physics of the situation means that some of them are going to go home without treatment. --------- Then tomorrow, 20 more patients come in, and you repeat the process. The day after that, another 20 patients. Etc. etc. You then repeat this situation until the COVID19 surge is over.
Tuna-Fish 5y ago
Wait, it costs money to get vaccinated in the USA? That is such an ridiculously shortsighted and stupid policy.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Vaccines and even monoclonal antibodies are free (though treatment may cost money still: the price of the hospital beds and whatnot). The $31 joke is about IVM: lice / parasite remover that people are taking because they think it cures COVID19. At least, that was my interpretation of the joke.
  - daxfohl 5y ago
    Well not quite. My parents are convinced this whole vaccine thing is a worldwide conspiracy invented and managed by big pharma to which deep state and big tech are subservient. Breaking down the numbers to show how ridiculous that idea is, somehow still didn't help.

dragontamer 5y ago

If we're bringing up costs... what actually bothers me rather severely is the $2100 price tag per Monoclonal Antibodies treatment. But it works. And people are freaking out about COVID19 so much that its free. Maybe we should start a debate about the moral hazards of giving highly expensive (though effective) COVID19 treatments to population centers who have refused to take the $20 vaccine? ------- If people want the "cheap miracle drug that works", that was dexamethasone, at a price tag of like $15 or so. And the vaccine of course. I don't know why they're going for IVM. As a steroid, its an innately risky treatment (steroids suppress your immune system). But its been shown that the cheap steroid dexamethasone, when used in correct doses, can greatly decrease mortality rates. So yeah, take with assistance of a doctor (to make sure your situation is the right use case), but we already have a "cheap miracle drug" success story here if people just want some hope or optimism in their lives. Dexamethasone was credited for cutting out 50% of deaths or something along that magnitude.

nradov 5y ago
Methylprednisolone is more effective than dexamethasone for treating COVID-19 lung injuries. Cost is similar. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252057#sec012 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06045-3 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...
listless 5y ago
This is basically the conservative argument that you don’t have a basic right to health care. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. I’m not saying that logic is flawed, but we should at least be consistent. If healthcare is a human right, you can’t then judge my life choices that got me there.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  I lean conservative. Numerous hospitals have reached triage of care. We now have to talk about how to conserve scarce resources. We need to pick "winners and losers". No one likes this discussion, but it must happen. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... * https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-letter.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-l... Now that we're reaching this level of crisis, hospitals are beginning to ration off care. I know the ethicists have theorized the proper ethics to this situation over the past year, but as citizens / voting members of the public, its our job to form an opinion about these ethics think-tanks, and whether or not we should support certain viewpoints or not. Health care cannot "be a right" if we cannot afford said health care for everyone. If we cannot afford health care for everyone (literally not enough hospital beds), some mechanism needs to be used to prioritize who gets care or not. No amount of policy can squeeze blood from a stone: if we don't have enough hospital beds anymore, then we must systematically deny care in some regards. (And whatever system we choose will hopefully be fair) Money, for all of its problems, is an effective prioritization methodology... and simple to understand. You give care to those who can afford it. People always criticize the methodology but in the absence of better choices, I'm going to default to it. I think there's some hypotheticals saying that maybe the vaccinated should have priority (since the unvaccinated are the group who is causing the crisis, we should "punish" the unvaccinated in this regards). I think I can accept that as an answer as a higher priority.
  - somewhereoutth 5y ago
    Meanwhile back in civilisation, healthcare is allocated by need.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Lets say the hospital is full, as is the case in Alaska Regional Hospital, and then 20 more COVID19 patients come in. 1. You can either kick out some people in beds (making room for the new patients). 2. Or, you turn away the patients (and wish them the best of course). Those are the only two choices. When you're out of beds, you're out of beds. Governors across the country have been pulling in student nurses, and increasing nurse pay to encourage retired nurses back into the hospitals. But eventually, you run out of nurses / beds / resources, and run up against this hard limit. We have an ability to magically summon new nurses, but all those abilities have been used up by now (we had a nursing shortage _before_ COVID19 happened after all) The correct answer, from an "ethics" perspective, is to be ready for the situation, and ethically prioritize the different cases. But all of them "need" the hospital bed. But the physics of the situation means that some of them are going to go home without treatment. --------- Then tomorrow, 20 more patients come in, and you repeat the process. The day after that, another 20 patients. Etc. etc. You then repeat this situation until the COVID19 surge is over.

Tuna-Fish 5y ago

Wait, it costs money to get vaccinated in the USA? That is such an ridiculously shortsighted and stupid policy.

dragontamer 5y ago
Vaccines and even monoclonal antibodies are free (though treatment may cost money still: the price of the hospital beds and whatnot). The $31 joke is about IVM: lice / parasite remover that people are taking because they think it cures COVID19. At least, that was my interpretation of the joke.
- daxfohl 5y ago
  Well not quite. My parents are convinced this whole vaccine thing is a worldwide conspiracy invented and managed by big pharma to which deep state and big tech are subservient. Breaking down the numbers to show how ridiculous that idea is, somehow still didn't help.