By Louis Casiano | Fox News
The federal government is classifying the deaths of patients infected with the coronavirus as COVID-19 deaths, regardless of any underlying health issues that could have contributed to the loss of someone's life.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said the federal government is continuing to count the suspected COVID-19 deaths, despite other nations doing the opposite.
"There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem," she said during a Tuesday news briefing at the White House. "Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.
"The intent is ... if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that," she added.
Asked whether the numbers could skew data the government is trying to collect, Birx said that would mostly apply more to rural areas where testing isn't being implemented on a wide scale.
"I'm pretty confident that in New York City and New Jersey and places that have these large outbreaks and COVID-only hospitals. ... I can tell you they are testing," she said.
Dr. Michael Baden, a Fox News contributor, said it's reasonable to include the death of someone infected with the virus, who also had other health issues, in the COVID-19 body count.
"In the normal course, autopsies would then determine whether the person died of the effects of the COVID virus, whether the person had a brain tumor or brain hemorrhage for example that might be unrelated to it and what the relative significance of both the infection and the pre-existing disease is," Baden told Fox News.
However, the number of autopsies being performed could be low due to the danger of infection, he said.
"Then you will include in those numbers some people who did have a pre-existing condition that would have caused death anyway, but that's probably a small number," Baden said.
The United States had 398,185 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday night, including more than 12,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
President Trump spent Monday trying to assure Americans that the U.S. and health facilities are prepared for a possible surge in cases in the coming weeks.
“Progress has been made before the surge,” Trump said during the White House coronavirus briefing where he said hospitals will be stockpiled with much-needed equipment. “The next week, week and half is when the big surge is going to come.”
DANIEL PAYNE, ASSISTANT EDITOR - The College Fix
A veteran scholar of epidemiology has warned that the ongoing lockdowns throughout the United States and the rest of the world are almost certainly just prolonging the coronavirus outbreak rather than doing anything to truly mitigate it.
Knut Wittkowski, previously the longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, said in an interview with the Press and the Public Project that the coronavirus could be “exterminated” if we permitted most people to lead normal lives and sheltered the most vulnerable parts of society until the danger had passed.
“[W]hat people are trying to do is flatten the curve. I don’t really know why. But, what happens is if you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more time. And I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary,” he said.
“With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms, especially if they are children. So, it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated,” he added.
Wittkowski argued that the standard cycle of respiratory diseases is a two-week outbreak, including a peak, after which “it’s gone.” He pointed out that even in a regime of “social distancing,” the virus will still find ways to spread, just more slowly:
You cannot stop the spread of a respiratory disease within a family, and you cannot stop it from spreading with neighbors, with people who are delivering, who are physicians—anybody. People are social, and even in times of social distancing, they have contacts, and any of those contacts could spread the disease. It will go slowly, and so it will not build up herd immunity, but it will happen. And it will go on forever unless we let it go.
Asked about Anthony Fauci, the White House medical expert who for weeks has been predicting significant numbers of COVID-19 deaths in America as well as major ongoing disruptions to daily life possibly for years, Wittkowski replied: “Well, I’m not paid by the government, so I’m entitled to actually do science.”
@RBP
KevinD (04-08-2020)
When I was a kid if someone got sick the rest of us were thrown in with them. The moms didn't want to spend the next three months nursing one kid after another, get it all over with at once.
Mom: "Where's Billy, you two are usually inseparable."
me: "His mom won't let him out, he has the chicken pox."
Next thing I knew mom was loading me and the siblings up and heading to Billys to beat the crowd. Word gets out fast and half the elementary school was already there. When we left I even saw some license plates from Iowa.
This virus wouldn't have stood a chance with a 60's era mom.
KevinD (04-08-2020)
I think you guys should test out this theory - in your counties
Everywhere I'm looking, I'm seeing reports saying that there's no guarantee that herd immunity would work for Covid-19. They don't know enough about the virus yet to determine whether it would be a safe option without a vaccine.
Warning: The posts of this forum member may contain trigger language which may be considered offensive to some.
Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it.
lost in melb. (04-08-2020)
KevinD (04-08-2020)
Warning: The posts of this forum member may contain trigger language which may be considered offensive to some.
Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it.
So... if we never are allowed to leave the house the curve will be further flattened and extended?
ST. PAUL — Minnesotans will remain under a stay-at-home order through May 4, Gov. Tim Walz announced Wednesday, April 8, as the state continues work to push back a peak of COVID-19 cases.
In a televised news conference, the governor said he would extend the order requiring Minnesotans to stay home except for when obtaining essential services and planned to take into consideration additional revisions as Minnesotans continue to limit travel and social gatherings. The order extends the definition of essential work authorized to cover landscapers and business owners checking on their facilities or managing supplies shipped in while they're shuttered.
The original order took effect March 27 and was set to continue through Friday. The extension comes Wednesday as the Minnesota Department of Health reported 1,154 cases of COVID-19 in Minnesota of 30,753 tested for the illness. Thirty-nine deaths have stemmed from the disease or complications.
Walz in recent days thanked Minnesotans for abiding by the original order and helping curb the projected spread of COVID-19, pushing out the projected peak in cases. Health officials have said social distancing measures have pushed a projected peak in cases past April and into the summer. Resulting hospitalizations were also projected to peak later, giving state emergency officials more time to build up personal protective equipment and intensive care unit capacity.
While Minnesota appears to be having more success than any other state in flattening the curve in disease spread, Walz warned that that success could be quickly lost if the orders were discontinued.
glad i got a fancy japanese toilet
Holy hell, 799 deaths in New York reported in one day. Sounds like a war zone there...
Here is the most recent Canadian projection and modeling, shown with and without effective social distancing. See page 15.
https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ph...inform-eng.pdf
A 1995 heat wave in Chicago killed 739 people in 5 days. To date, 528 have died in the entire state of Illinois from Coronavirus.
I wanted to be a Monk, but I never got the chants.
KevinD (04-10-2020), Teh One Who Knocks (04-10-2020)
Just some more good news...
While Australia appears to be “flattening the curve” of coronavirus infections, there appears to be a worrying new development.
Speaking on Friday, Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly was asked about the situation in South Korea, where patients who had recovered from COVID-19 were again reinfected.
The fact that people can be reinfected relatively soon after recovering from a first bout of the virus was “concerning”, Professor Kelly admitted.