Rete

What is a bar steward?

Steerpike

Interesting. If people like your friend are NOT counted in the 'official figures', then yes, I can imagine we are way under-counting at the moment.

I'm a IT guy (retired) but I spent time today setting up a teleconference service for a doctor's office I'm associated with. We did some test 'calls' today and tomorrow they plan to start using it with patients.

With all this 'stay at home' stuff, and reliance on video conferencing, I can foresee a huge bottleneck in these video services - many of which are free.

Steerpike

Polite form of Bastard ...

AlienUk

What is also scary is that a childhood friend of mine works in one of the hospitals in NYC....he says with the patients that have pre-existing conditions ie heart issues and die from the coronavirus if they possibly can, they are putting the cause of death as one of these conditions rather than the virus....of course, I have no proof this is actually what is happening or if he's just repeating hearsay etc....
Again, not sure what the hospital stands to gain from misreporting the numbers....

scrubbedexpat099

If you have numerous conditions and you die why would you focus on one? It seems you only get a mention in the press if that is the only condition they could trace which suggests the majority of deaths involved multiple conditions, the interesting number would be how many people have died over an above the number that could otherwise have been expected.

AlienUk

You definitely have a point there....and I guess without knowing the probability of each patient dying from one of these pre-existing conditions, it probably could never be proven without a doubt what actually killed them in the end...

scrubbedexpat099

Begs the question what the rules are for death certificates, would seem logical that they would vary a bit, you would expect them to be a best opinion.

Steerpike

You may have a pre-existing condition that is perfectly stable and managed by medication / treatment / etc. But that pre-existing condition, coupled with this new virus, could be a nasty combo. A simple example might be a respiratory condition; you take certain drugs, your breathing is manageable. But C-19 comes along and whacks your lungs, and boom - you die. In such a case, it would seem the 'cause of death' is fairly allocated to C-19 but it's worth nothing there were contributing factors.

scrubbedexpat096

Difficult to acertain, won't really know an answer until we compare year on year.


It's a mute point though really, the science shows without action we would have millions more deaths worldwide,

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lansbury

I persevered because he is 2 year old Jack Russell/terrier cross and a bundle of energy. Keeping him shut up with just the garden to run about in would be a bigger strain than dealing with the walking. But it might come to have to do just that.

scrubbedexpat099

I can think of all sorts of examples where treatment was stable until it was not, without the C-19 issue. So yes if that was the only additional factor it may be a reasonable assumption, determining if that was the case is the tricky bit. I still would like to see the increase in the norm. The trouble I see is that the numbers are relatively small and may well be within the margin of error. Hopefully somebody is keeping track.

RICH

Almost 2 weeks working from home. Not too bad but not a word from my boss about anything that Ccanged in the office. Like 3 or 5 others that appear t o be absent.

robin1234

On British Death Certificates, this has been required (or encouraged) since the nineteenth century. Doctors are supposed to record the sequence of causes of death, for instance, vascular dementia, pneumonia. See this guidance leaflet, which has some good examples.
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-libra...fDeath_PDF.pdf

I assume it’s the same in the US, although each state is different.

robtuck

Isn't it often the case that they (the medical profession) will move to a most likely diagnosis based on the presented symptoms, especially when there are large numbers and the diagnosis wouldn't alter the course of action. As an example - it could be Flu or Covid-19, but if the treatment is the same, why wait 3 days to get test results, just treat the worst case.

Hiro11

Me:

• Just finished third week working from home. Work is absolutely insane: everyone is scrambling, everything needs to happen right now. Ridiculously stressful. It's getting to the point where it needs to stop, frankly. We need to prioritize what's actually important and let non-time-critical things go.
• I've been exercising A LOT to burn off the above stress and have something to do.
• Watching a Magnum PI marathon. It's the perfect combination of nostalgia, Hawaii, a Ferrari and the best mustache ever on TV. Also, I believe John Hillerman's British accent is among the best ever done by an American actor. There are also many, many episodes to get through.

My wife:

• Not working due to lockdown. Her company will stop paying them this week but is not laying them off. She is very worried. I don't think she's going to lose her job, but it's likely that she loses significant income.
• Baking bread every day, which I've enjoyed.
• Built out an entire gym in our house: new treadmill, nw stationary bike, pull up bar, dip bar, weight bench etc.
• Watching Tiger King, whatever that is.

Daughter #1 (19 years old):

• Home from her university (Indiana University, Bloomington). Note that IU has not refunded us a cent of housing/sorority/boarding costs and has not mentioned any plans to do so, which irritates me. Misses her friends terribly. Spending some time sitting on lawns twenty feet away from local friends.
• Taking classes online. These seem not great, to be honest. Small benefit: grading will be easy, she's got a 4.0 GPA already and it will likely be easy to maintain that.
• Sleeping very, very late. Getting up, running five miles, going back to her room. Still: very pleasant, not complaining, lovely to be around. Even had her birthday during this and didn't complain. What a nice person.

Daughter #2 (15 years old, soon to be 16 years old):

• Currently on spring break. Two weeks of online classes prior to that. These classes seem well organized and seem to have high work requirements.
• Adopted painting in her room. She's painted three pictures so far.
• A bit more bothered by this. Daughter #2 is a social animal (so is daughter #1, but daughter #2 is REALLY social). She has tremendous energy, she hates being at home, loves to be around her friends, loves to be active. She seems a bit lethargic now. I'm a bit more worried about her than I am about daughter #1, I've tried to get her to go on bike rides, hikes etc to keep her busy.