Around here 100 covid patients in ICU has been considered high (a year after original pandemic estimates showing peak utilization of 200). The population of this province is 5 million.

I'm not sure how this situation really makes sense when covid continues to work its way through the unvaccinated population and so much money is spent on society-wide initiatives with very high cost and low benefit (e.g. hobble tourism by demanding tests at borders). Usually the excuse given is that the bottleneck is qualified labour and the supply of that is perfectly inelastic. If you have $100B and 18 months you cannot expand ICU capacity. So we cannot as an arbitrary example have tourism and then spend 10% of that tax revenue on adding 50 more ICU beds.

I think in reality we just have an uncoordinated mess, a lot of it is driven by the media and anxieties that tend to fixate on narrow outcomes or measures, and a lot of the rationales are motivated reasoning or based on local constraints of the "computer says no" variety (e.g. FDA/Health Canada take forever to approve drugs known to work).

Price gouging because it's private insurance.

My medical/dental insurance company is already getting premiums from me and my employer, yet I have to pay a copay. I went to my dentist last month to get a crown. My out of pocket was $1100, even though I have dental insurance. The total cost of the crown was $1600. Should I be grateful that my insurance only paid for 1/3 of it? Talk about scam.

My crown costs more than the ultrasound he hasn't gotten. The way people talk about him on here, I would think he wouldn't think twice about paying for an ultrasound himself.

I used to work at Glendale Adventist Hospital. They billed $200 for one PA/lateral chest x-ray. This was back in 2003. Price gouging indeed. Private healthcare.

Part of me wants to receive something of value for the vast sums of money that I have paid to this country in taxes, just on principle. Also if you “go private” and pay for the scan yourself, then any subsequent diagnostics or treatments must also be done privately (which would end up being many thousands of pounds).

But yeah, you’re probably right, silly me for thinking the public healthcare system will actually provide healthcare to someone that isn’t a geriatric.

And it’s not private insurance. That would be purely out of pocket, paid by debit card. My supplemental private insurance considers it a pre-existing condition which they don’t have to cover here.

British healthcare sucks.

The problem isn’t the fact that it’s private versus public. This is where I think liberals are seeking a solution that will only make things worse.

The problem is the failure, in the US, to allow market forces to correct the problem. Giant insurers and the enormous consolidated health care systems have virtual monopolies in the regions they serve, that is why they can charge whatever they want. This ill-advised notion that our employers should provide us “health” coverage is an abysmal failure and we are witnessing that every day.

Imaging centers everywhere should be popping up with their prices posted, and they should compete for your business. Let people shop for the best price and pay out of pocket for these services. I guarantee you that if you unleash the power of the real free market, prices will come down. Large health insurers and health care goliaths have enormous lobbying power and are protecting their own interests by suppressing the free market and disallowing any competition. That’s the problem

^ Yep. In imaging it’s all about machine utilization anyway, so specialized centers could make the best use of expensive scanners. Then you can farm the reading out to radiographers in India for half the cost (or less). It’s literally the easiest possible application of telemedicine, you’re just sending JPEGs.

Still no impact since February, unless I go out to Sac/LA/Bay Area then I have to wear a mask...sometimes. I bring my COVID card just in case.

Looks like many countries acted immediately banning flights and travel to and from South Africa related the newly identified variant coming out of that region. Will be interesting where this leads. Hopefully nowhere. I certainly get the desire for lock downs not being an option. I just don't know what the solution is for overrun hospitals since there is equal aversion to vaccine mandates. I really feel bad for all the healthcare workers on the front lines constantly having to deal with the surges in covid patients and here we go with a new surge making its way globally and an new variant for this winter... good times.

Biden is banning travel to the US from South Africa and some other African nations... but why isn't he banning travel from the UK and Belgium, where this variant has also been detected?

^ Because it’s all a waste of time and we need to move in, that’s why

Because this “new variant” is already everywhere. You don’t think anyone had travelled from SA to the US with it before they’d sequenced the thing? Banning travel is pointless.

Short lesson about some move semantics.

Always, people from impoverished countries (because of corruption by local governments, not so much because any so-called new imperialism) move to wealthier countries to find opportunities and make a better living. I would do the same if I was born in Rwanda or in Mali. You would do the very same if you were from, say Afghanistan, Cambodia or El Salvador.

I really don't see why people in the US would move, until their empire collapses from arrogance and decadence, as all empires throughout mankind always did.
There never was any exception thus far. No empire was peaceful and quiet enough to remain.

He's telling them to lockdown or else we are gonna have to do it for them.

What are you talking about?

As soon as the media starts talking about the “scary new variant” on TV I immediately change the channel

I recommend others do the same. Actually, don’t even watch cable news. Even better

And i thought you were going to tell us something about modern c++.

So, if banning travel is pointless, barring the UK’s ban on travel to SA, would you yourself travel there, and would you also chuck the mask since you are double vaxxed?

Ultimately, banning travel won't work by itself. But what it can do with a competent public health establishment is to minimize the number of people coming into the country carrying the "variant of concern", keeping those numbers within the capacity of public health workers to track, isolate and trace their contacts.

Unfortunately, the US CDC has so far not proven itself competent and I don't have much hope they will take the opportunity they are being handed but we'll see.

This variant is apparently different from previous ones in many respects but the important one here is that it can be detected with the routine PCR test already required of international airline passengers. That should mean that travelers carrying it could be blocked at the country of origin but failing that they can be identified and traced after landing if the numbers are limited.

My guess is that if those numbers become significant in European countries, flights from the one countries may be halted but for now there are only a couple of cases in Europe. As the idea of lockdowns and the rest in early 2020 was to "flatten the curve", the idea here should be to keep the numbers of people entering the country carrying this variant within the capability to trace, and isolate . . . if we are even trying. Otherwise, it probably is pointless to block the travel because the variant will get here and we can only hope it isn't that much more transmissible than delta and that the vaccines work against it.

He probably would because he thinks his gym-toned physique makes him invulnerable. And having had covid as well as being vaccinated, he may well have more immunity than most of us.

But because he would do what you suggest doesn't mean rational people should.

Because there are apparently 304 ICU beds capable of taking care of patients on ventilators in British Columbia. You are talking about reducing that normal capacity by ⅓. Either the province is egregiously oversupplied with ICU beds or those 100 being occupied with covid patients means people with strokes, heart attacks and severe trauma who need one of the beds won't be getting it and people don't like being told their relative died for lack of an appropriate bed since that bed was taken up by someone with covid.

I would love to go to Cape Town for Christmas. Actually looked at doing so a few weeks ago, but the flights this year were ridiculously expensive. I know several people who will be there over Xmas and NYE, including a friend who’s been in Malawi for the last couple months (conservation work). Another friend will still go, but now will have to return to London via the US again like last year.

Instead we’re going to Florida for a couple weeks in December. If they tighten rules here, we will just stay there rather than coming back for Christmas.

I have a better idea: STOP testing people. Except for the severely ill

Common sense....what a precious but rare commodity....

A little birdie told me that’s what this country will do next March. Managing Covid will shift to the HSA (Health Security Agency) which is responsible for flu, etc. It will literally be treated as another kind of flu, and they will keep track of cases and deaths (as they do for flu) but there will be no rules, testing or isolation requirements.

Back in October Covid deaths passed deaths from HIV/AIDS to become America's deadliest pandemic. In less that 2 years more people in this country have died from Covid than in over 40 years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As of December we surpassed 800,000 deaths.

did the little bird, let's name him larpy, what do you say? did little larpy tweet anything to you about reparations for the people you made sick or killed from no masking?

such a great time to be a lawyer. :yuck:

^ I’m sure you’re not a lawyer, because you sound like an idiot.

I’m not convinced it has actually killed more than Spanish flu. The estimates for that are 500k to 850k with most around 700k, but they didn’t have PCR tests and weren’t attributing every death of a person with a positive test in preceding weeks to the flu virus. The US population at the time was also less than a third of what it is now, so mortality rates were actually multiples higher than Covid. And most everyone was susceptible, rather than just the very old or otherwise ill.

But sure, keep pretending this is Armageddon.

10023 - what is the situation in London? We are still planning on going but if we have to quarantine for 2 days upon arrival waiting for test results we not sure it is worth it. Do you know if we can get the test at the Heathrow?

For someone who is so adamant that people need to go out and live their lives you sure spend an inordinate amount of your time arguing with people on the internet about it.

The official COVID death toll is significantly under counted.

I was just in South Africa and it was a royal pain in the ass to get back to the US. Completely ridiculous and knee jerk reaction.

Welcome to the club..... That was my impression as well.

Sure it is.

I’m not sure, there might be. I’m going to the US next week and am planning to just ignore the quarantine when I get back. They don’t have the resources to follow up.

I am just posting statistics I find interesting. I never said anything about Armageddon, LOL. You're so dramatic. I am aware of all your points including the fact the population was about 1/3 what it is now. I am also aware that back then healthcare was abysmal, there were no ventilators, and many of the sick died from secondary bacterial infections. Regardless, this is now the deadliest pandemic here in the US and the numbers will continue to climb because dumb people choose not to get vaccinated.

Forwarding this message to MI6.

Covid basically just being used as an excuse to shirk certain obligations and responsibilities at this point. Just keep name dropping “Covid concerns” and you can do (or not do) whatever you want. :haha:

“Our hotel no longer offers service X due to ‘Covid concerns’”

“We used to provide this service but, due to ‘Covid concerns’, we do so no longer”

Ventilators are of questionable utility, and many (if not most) Covid deaths were also due to secondary bacterial infections.

Anyway, it’s not the “deadliest” in any sense other than the nominal tally (which is now over 2 full years). The percentage of people vulnerable, the percentage of cases that lead to death, etc are all very low. Most people have never been at any risk whatsoever.

I already forwarded it.

10023 should be getting ‘visited’ by some agents soon

All i read here is that the AIDs situation in America was never really that serious for most Americans.

Sure. Yet whether or not it was serious for most Americans or not it was previously the most deadly until now. Then again if we didn't treat each new strain of the flu as new statistics I suppose the flu by far is most deadly. Time will tell in a few years if on a annual basis more people die from the flu or covid. Apparently this new strain is less severe and more contagious, which sounds pretty promising at making it less deadly.

The accounting of covid deaths is different from the historical approach to influenza. In the past if somebody got seriously ill and showed up in the hospital they might have an influenza test. If they randomly got mildly ill or their friend was sick chances were low that they would be tested for influenza. These days there's mass screening for covid and if somebody dies after a positive test their death is typically considered a covid death. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this if the context is understood but these counts aren't all comparable.

If somebody invented a clinically harmless virus that was good at replicating and we applied the covid standard to it, it would be implicated in a lot of deaths.

It's a tricky subject because on the one hand you've got people arguing covid did not cause significant excess mortality in say the United States (it did, far beyond a bad flu season), but then other people who seem to want to over-estimate the impact.

Then there is the reality of immune senescence and the fact that many people ultimately die from some pathogen, so a death of a frail 92 year old is not really the same as a healthy 20 year old dying. This is a political third rail so it gets ignored. Likewise statistics tend to mix in deaths of people with severe comorbidities with healthy people, like healthy 5-11 year olds with 5-11 year olds who are morbidly obese with diabetes or dying of cancer. This screws up the risk calculus for everybody (exaggerates for healthy people, underexaggerates for at-risk).

A map of possible restriction increases. This map is from the CE and since some of you hide...here it is.

Hochul (NYS)no doubt will. She already declared state of emergency leading up to Omicron.

March eh? I wonder what is so special about that month?
It sounds like lots of US employers are pushing back their own reentry plans to....March! As if everyone got the same memo. Parts of Portland have picked up. Parts of the city look like an omega man ghost town.

Ironically, England is re-imposing an indoor mask mandates starting today.

March is the end of winter, and therefore the end of the period during which the NHS is regularly under pressure from flu because it sucks.

I’ve been in Miami since Wednesday so I don’t know whether people are following the new mask rules or not. I am supposed to go back to England before Christmas, but if the announcement on the 18th goes in the wrong direction then I’m staying here and arranging for movers to pack up our apartment in London.

That would be the last straw. The Brits can sit in their tiny houses while it rains outside and clap for their shitty healthcare system, while voting for Brexiteers who ruin London. It’s a fucking gerontocracy.

It's quite ironic you crying about "gerontocracy" while landing in Florida.

Id stay in Miami anyway. I don't know what American businesses are waiting for. Stay at home orders have all been lifted. I think introvert industries are never going back tho. My office came back in June but its kind of a hybrid system. I hear only 30 percent of NYC workers are back. That seems crazy to me. Its probably a different vibe in high density cities but I can't imagine what cbds in low density downtowns are like right now.

Outside of the principal cities there was never anything downtown anyway. And people aren’t back in the office because commuting is literally the stupidest fucking waste of time ever imagined. I think hyper centralised cities with enormous “daytime populations” relative to their residents might be done for. Entertainment districts will survive, because they need a critical mass to be enjoyable. But I don’t ever plan to work more than 20 minutes away from where I sleep ever again and I think a lot of people would agree. Now for me that means living in the center of the city and walking to the office, but for others it clearly will be different.

^^^ After deal with shitty LA traffic for the past few months, I’m 100% with you. At least this is one good thing COVID has led to on a living standpoint.

There is a big COVID outbreak brewing in NYC. I was in close contact with at least one person that tested positive recently, and possibly had contact with more than that. All breakthrough cases. I took a test the day before I found that out which came back negative so hopefully that remains the case. I'm also hearing of breakthrough cases shutting down offices throughout the city.