Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.

[Ghostmaker]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

Well, that explains how you transitioned from 'no one is forcing you to make that choice' to 'obey the mandate'.

Because people dying is a great way to justify fascism, after all.

[Squidi]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

I know this is a personal issue for you, so I don't want you to take offense at this. This whole COVID thing has been a bunch of misinformation and, frankly, medical malpractice, and trying to find the truth of a situation requires asking questions in a dispassionate and objective manner.

But it seems to me, the hospital was more likely to be understaffed than overbooked. If somebody is coding in the ambulance, the doctors and nurses will generally give them priority over non-emergency cases - generally speaking, COVID is not an emergency because it is not a sudden and dangerous killer. It takes days, and even weeks.

There's two potential explanations that I can think of. The first is that, yeah, they are losing nurses due to vaccine mandates. More than the number of actual ICU beds, hospital capacity is defined by the number of nurses. In Houston recently, they fired 150 nurses for not getting vaccinated. Since it's typically one nurse per four to seven patients, that means they lost upwards of 1000 patients capacity. Naturally, a few days later, reports were coming out that Houston hospitals were over capacity. A lack of nurses would absolutely affect emergency room response times - but it doesn't explain the cemeteries (which I'll get to in a second).

The second potential explanation is that they are converting ER rooms into ICU beds. This is possible, even likely, and would result in a reduced ER capacity. If this was the case, it would make sense to keep a person in an ambulance (which has much of the same equipment an ICU unit has) to keep them stable until an operating room (or specialist or whatever) was available. Even if they turn ER beds into ICU beds, intubated patients don't require emergency attention and so would not generally affect ER response times except by soaking up rooms. They could probably fix it easily by just not intubating COVID patients, especially when that is what is actually killing people and not COVID.

The other weird thing is that ambulances typically radio an emergency dispatch officer which will then route them to an appropriate facility. If one hospital can not take on additional emergencies, the ambulance will be routed to a different hospital (even one in a different city). It would be weird for an ambulance to arrive at a hospital that couldn't take a new patient unless there was just the one hospital.


As for the cemeteries, early on in COVID, when they were saying that bodies were being stacked up in the hallways - that was because they changed the procedures for body handling due to the disease. As such, funeral homes were unable to process the bodies in their normal manner, which greatly slowed down the process. This applied to burials as well.

Googling "burial backlog", I've found several articles on it. One of them said this:

But in many cases the wait for burial services is compounded by the COVID-19 protocols in place leading up to a death. Rose Hills officials say many victims had already been separated from their families for weeks, even months.

They also said that they provided expedited burials, but most families were willing to wait for a full funeral service. So, they can get the bodies in the ground just fine. It's the COVID protocols which are limiting the funerals themselves.

Just to point out that this is the new normal, this article was written in January 2021. Found another one from July 2021. It seems like burial backlogs have been a problem for a while now.

Is it inhumane? Yes. But it isn't because there is a giant influx of deaths. It's because of the bureaucracy surrounding COVID that has limited what funeral homes, and bereaved families, are allowed to do. COVID protocols are to blame, not COVID.

[Ratman_tf]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

I have seen far too many "news" reports trying to push the "overcapacity" narrative with holes in the stories to take an anecdotal story from a poster with a clear investment in the narrative to take this seriously.

[Mistwell]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

Well, that explains how you transitioned from 'no one is forcing you to make that choice' to 'obey the mandate'.

Because people dying is a great way to justify fascism, after all.

I never said "obey the mandate." But hey, you lying about things I say is standard operating procedure for you. You have no response to the things I do say, so you lie and hope nobody calls you on it.

Go ahead, prove me wrong. Where have I said obey the mandate? I've repeatedly said I wish people would get vaccinated, but I'd love for you to show me where I said obey the mandate.

[Mistwell]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

I know this is a personal issue for you, so I don't want you to take offense at this. This whole COVID thing has been a bunch of misinformation and, frankly, medical malpractice, and trying to find the truth of a situation requires asking questions in a dispassionate and objective manner.

But it seems to me, the hospital was more likely to be understaffed than overbooked.

It's a hospital I've used before. They've never had this issue, pre-covid. Their staffing levels have not been magically cut. They just have too many patients relative to the number of patients they had pre-covid, because of covid patients.

If somebody is coding in the ambulance, the doctors and nurses will generally give them priority over non-emergency cases - generally speaking, COVID is not an emergency because it is not a sudden and dangerous killer. It takes days, and even weeks.

It's bed space. You need a room and a bed and the nurses and doctors assigned to that bed to take an additional patient. They didn't have it, because too many beds are full of existing covid patients.

There's two potential explanations that I can think of. The first is that, yeah, they are losing nurses due to vaccine mandates.

There was no vaccine mandate at the time.

The second potential explanation is that they are converting ER rooms into ICU beds. This is possible, even likely, and would result in a reduced ER capacity. If this was the case, it would make sense to keep a person in an ambulance (which has much of the same equipment an ICU unit has) to keep them stable until an operating room (or specialist or whatever) was available. Even if they turn ER beds into ICU beds, intubated patients don't require emergency attention and so would not generally affect ER response times except by soaking up rooms. They could probably fix it easily by just not intubating COVID patients, especially when that is what is actually killing people and not COVID.

Yes I do suspect they've been converting beds to ICU beds. But it's ridiculous for you to claim it's the intubating which is killing people rather than the Covid. Intubation is a last case scenario. It happens at the point where but-for intubation your likelihood of death is nearly 100%. What a fucking absurd take from you.

The other weird thing is that ambulances typically radio an emergency dispatch officer which will then route them to an appropriate facility. If one hospital can not take on additional emergencies, the ambulance will be routed to a different hospital (even one in a different city). It would be weird for an ambulance to arrive at a hospital that couldn't take a new patient unless there was just the one hospital.

I've mentioned before this has been a cascade effect here, repeatedly. They do re-route which then fills other nearby hospitals which rapidly results in essentially a "stay in place."

As for the cemeteries, early on in COVID, when they were saying that bodies were being stacked up in the hallways - that was because they changed the procedures for body handling due to the disease. As such, funeral homes were unable to process the bodies in their normal manner, which greatly slowed down the process. This applied to burials as well.

Googling "burial backlog", I've found several articles on it. One of them said this:

But in many cases the wait for burial services is compounded by the COVID-19 protocols in place leading up to a death. Rose Hills officials say many victims had already been separated from their families for weeks, even months.

They also said that they provided expedited burials, but most families were willing to wait for a full funeral service. So, they can get the bodies in the ground just fine. It's the COVID protocols which are limiting the funerals themselves.

She didn't die of Covid dude.  There is no covid protocol for her burial, it's just a backlog of bodies.

Just to point out that this is the new normal, this article was written in January 2021. Found another one from July 2021. It seems like burial backlogs have been a problem for a while now.

Is it inhumane? Yes. But it isn't because there is a giant influx of deaths. It's because of the bureaucracy surrounding COVID that has limited what funeral homes, and bereaved families, are allowed to do. COVID protocols are to blame, not COVID.

There IS a giant influx of deaths. We count this. We've always counted this. The number of deaths is up enormously. There is no getting around that fact. I've seen people try to argue it's the lockdowns themselves which caused the increase in deaths but there is no escaping the 100% true fact we do have more deaths right now. Period. ANY objective standard which measures death rates is in fact showing more people dying.

[Mistwell]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

I have seen far too many "news" reports trying to push the "overcapacity" narrative with holes in the stories to take an anecdotal story from a poster with a clear investment in the narrative to take this seriously.

LOL OK. I am sure my coworker will feel comforted by your ongoing internet badassery. It's fine if you don't want to take me seriously, but then don't fucking respond to things you're not actually giving a fair shake to. Just move on if you're going to be a dick. I am sure it's what you'd prefer I do rather than just be dismissive of your posts, particularly when it's about a personal issue.

[Mistwell]

double

[Zelen]

New Atlantic article points out what I called out weeks ago: More than 50% of hospitalizations are with SarsCov-2, not for SarsCov-2

Note this also corresponds with UK health data I've seen (sadly don't have the link on hand) demonstrating more than 60% of UK SarsCov-2 positive hospitalizations were non-serious or incidental cases presenting for reasons other than Covid.

[Ratman_tf]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

I have seen far too many "news" reports trying to push the "overcapacity" narrative with holes in the stories to take an anecdotal story from a poster with a clear investment in the narrative to take this seriously.

LOL OK. I am sure my coworker will feel comforted by your ongoing internet badassery. It's fine if you don't want to take me seriously, but then don't fucking respond to things you're not actually giving a fair shake to. Just move on if you're going to be a dick. I am sure it's what you'd prefer I do rather than just be dismissive of your posts, particularly when it's about a personal issue.

That's exactly why I'm skeptical about your post. You lean into how I'm supposedly being a dick, claim I'm not giving you a fair shake (I never said you were lying), and then claim it's a personal issue.
Maybe you're lying, maybe you're omitting details that don't support your narrative, maybe you're telling the unvarnished truth. There's no way to tell.

I do find it covenient that your narrative is in line with the current media's narrative. A very fashionable post.

[dkabq]

Honestly hate the fact wearing masks was politicized by the left and ridiculed by the right... Wearing a mask certainly has perks.

Unfortunately, none of those perks involve being effective against COVID. That's why it is politicized. There's no actual studies, evidence, or data suggesting that masks work (actually the exact opposite). So if they don't work, how can the choice to force people to wear them be anything but political?

Over and over again studies show masks work. And over and over again you try to re-write history and act like they have not shown they work.

Here is the latest:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/09/masks-randomized-study-bangladesh-covid/

Over and over again, you've claimed that masks work.

And over and over, we've pointed out that the studies overwhelmingly show masks had no or minimal effect, and that the studies that showed even a tiny effect were very low quality, with a minuscule number of subjects or very poor controls. The only solid study on the subject (Danmask) clearly shows no effect. We've explain the theories why masks don't work, covering things like particle size and aerosolization. And the last time you posted the Bangladesh study, we went over all the numerous methodological problems that invalidate its conclusions.

You never replied to any of these concerns. You keep popping up again and again to make the same claims, but every time we point out the problems with those claims, you vanish like a thief in the night.

I am skeptical of any statistical population level studies, as it is very difficult to properly account for all of the confounding effects in your statistical model(s).

As for the Bangladesh study, along with previously-raised issues, I was surprised that there was no mention of how much of the overall variance was explained by the correlation(s) they found. It could be that while they found a correlation, that correlation may only explain a small amount of the overall variance.

My druthers would be to do a controlled trial with two identical (as possible) groups. Each group is sequestered in identical conditions. Each group wears masks. One group is exposed to the covid virus under various conditions. The other groups goes through the same conditions but w/o the virus. I know that there are human experimentation issues that would have to be resolved. I would imagine that you would look for healthy young adult participants. And you would want the protocols and design-of-experiment process transparently vetted.

Certainly not a trivial task, but if you could get buy-in from both the "masks work" and the "masks don't work" sides, then the results would settle things.

Regards.

[Mistwell]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

I have seen far too many "news" reports trying to push the "overcapacity" narrative with holes in the stories to take an anecdotal story from a poster with a clear investment in the narrative to take this seriously.

LOL OK. I am sure my coworker will feel comforted by your ongoing internet badassery. It's fine if you don't want to take me seriously, but then don't fucking respond to things you're not actually giving a fair shake to. Just move on if you're going to be a dick. I am sure it's what you'd prefer I do rather than just be dismissive of your posts, particularly when it's about a personal issue.

That's exactly why I'm skeptical about your post. You lean into how I'm supposedly being a dick, claim I'm not giving you a fair shake (I never said you were lying), and then claim it's a personal issue.
Maybe you're lying, maybe you're omitting details that don't support your narrative, maybe you're telling the unvarnished truth. There's no way to tell.

I do find it covenient that your narrative is in line with the current media's narrative. A very fashionable post.

Media: X is happening a lot
Me: This happened to my coworker last week
You: Oh how convenient this thing that is happening a lot happened to you!

WTF is wrong with your brain dude. Why else did you think I'd mention it here? It's been discussed here and it came up so I mentioned it. Obviously.

And of course you called me a liar. You just did it again. We all know what you mean by "I do find it convenient."

It doesn't fit with your narrative so you won't even consider it's possibly true. You dismiss it regardless because it's inconvenient to take it seriously. But you spend time responding to it, repeatedly, demonstrating just how much you "don't take it seriously" right?

And the "personal" part wasn't you by the way - what happened is personal. I knew his mom. She used to dogsit our dog when we'd go out of town. She was a lovely person. And again, she didn't die of covid. She almost certainly would have died anyway had she gotten a hospital bed, because she was quite ill. I am not claiming "but for covid she'd be alive today" I am relating what my coworker (whose mom this was) told me happened. And he has no agenda either. He's pretty apolitical in fact.

And to be clear, I AM calling YOU a liar. When you lied about this, "Well, that explains how you transitioned from 'no one is forcing you to make that choice' to 'obey the mandate'. Because people dying is a great way to justify fascism, after all." Still waiting for where you claim I said "obey the mandate." Oh right...I never said that and you made it up and continue to squirm and try and pretend that didn't happen.

[Ratman_tf]

My friend's mother just died last week. Not from covid.

Even with her heart rate nearly zero, and barely breathing, and coding, the ambulance had to wait over 2 hours to get into the hospital. They were rendering emergency life saving compressions on her waiting in the parking lot to get in during that time.  And no, that is NOT NORMAL for our hospitals here. Pre-covid that didn't happen.

She unfortunately died. And the funeral cannot be until October because of the massive backlog of burials. And no, that is NOT NORMAL for cemeteries here. Pre-covid you'd be buried within a week or less.

But yes, please continue to pretend the number of people dying is all some conspiracy of manufactured statistics.

I have seen far too many "news" reports trying to push the "overcapacity" narrative with holes in the stories to take an anecdotal story from a poster with a clear investment in the narrative to take this seriously.

LOL OK. I am sure my coworker will feel comforted by your ongoing internet badassery. It's fine if you don't want to take me seriously, but then don't fucking respond to things you're not actually giving a fair shake to. Just move on if you're going to be a dick. I am sure it's what you'd prefer I do rather than just be dismissive of your posts, particularly when it's about a personal issue.

That's exactly why I'm skeptical about your post. You lean into how I'm supposedly being a dick, claim I'm not giving you a fair shake (I never said you were lying), and then claim it's a personal issue.
Maybe you're lying, maybe you're omitting details that don't support your narrative, maybe you're telling the unvarnished truth. There's no way to tell.

I do find it covenient that your narrative is in line with the current media's narrative. A very fashionable post.

Media: X is happening a lot
Me: This happened to my coworker last week
You: Oh how convenient this thing that is happening a lot happened to you!

WTF is wrong with your brain dude. Why else did you think I'd mention it here? It's been discussed here and it came up so I mentioned it. Obviously.

And of course you called me a liar. You just did it again. We all know what you mean by "I do find it convenient."

I'll put it in black and white again, so you can understand.

I don't know if you're lying or not.

It doesn't fit with your narrative so you won't even consider it's possibly true. You dismiss it regardless because it's inconvenient to take it seriously. But you spend time responding to it, repeatedly, demonstrating just how much you "don't take it seriously" right?

Wrong. Now you're just making shit up.

And the "personal" part wasn't you by the way - what happened is personal. I knew his mom. She used to dogsit our dog when we'd go out of town. She was a lovely person. And again, she didn't die of covid. She almost certainly would have died anyway had she gotten a hospital bed, because she was quite ill. I am not claiming "but for covid she'd be alive today" I am relating what my coworker (whose mom this was) told me happened. And he has no agenda either. He's pretty apolitical in fact.

I never said you claimed that she died of Covid.

And to be clear, I AM calling YOU a liar. When you lied about this, "Well, that explains how you transitioned from 'no one is forcing you to make that choice' to 'obey the mandate'. Because people dying is a great way to justify fascism, after all." Still waiting for where you claim I said "obey the mandate." Oh right...I never said that and you made it up and continue to squirm and try and pretend that didn't happen.

What the fuck are you talking about?

[Shrieking Banshee]

Im not gonna play the doubt game, but personal cases make for TERRIBLE policy.

Personal emotional appeals when it comes to large scale policy is a really, REALLY shitty thing to do.

[Pat]

Im not gonna play the doubt game, but personal cases make for TERRIBLE policy.
...
Personal emotional appeals when it comes to large scale policy is a really, REALLY shitty thing to do.

Yep.

They also derail conversations. Which I'm sure is a complete shock to anyone reading the last few posts.

[Ghostmaker]

https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1436411836430262273

Shut the fuck up about vaccines and masking. No, I'm serious. Shut. The fuck. Up.

Raggedy Ann is up there at the podium, gets asked straight up why vaccines are required for citizens but not for illegal aliens and just walks past the question.