Fauci Moves the Goalposts

 

This is brutal, and it sums up what I think of the public health profession. Were they ready for any aspect of this pandemic?

BTW, Howard Wall has a great Twitter account.

Published in Healthcare
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  1. Tex929rr Coolidge
    Tex929rr
    @Tex929rr

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):

     

    Texas, I assume?

    https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/schools/texas-education-agency/

    If all the schools have been open since Labor Day, that means (if I’ve got this right) that close to 3 million K-12 students have been broadly exposed to the virus. The math says 2.2% of them have the virus, and that 4.5% of teachers have it.

    Unless I’ve missed something in the news (and I don’t watch TV news, and I only scan headlines), I don’t recall tens of thousands of children dying in Texas, nor tens of thousands of teachers. If you *do* catch the virus, the death rate is 1.6%, overall.

    Conclusion: You can safely open up the schools. The infection rate is tiny, you quarantine those who have it, vaccinate the rest, and move on.

    Yes.  We have a very interesting set of circumstances here in that our generally conservative governor was seen as too supportive of lockdowns and was harmed politically in the spring and summer.  When the subject of opening schools came up, he and the state education agency strictly forbade local officials from interfering with school board decisions on whether or not schools opened, while at the same time mandating that schools offer both in person as well as remote learning.  The rural district where I sit on the board has in person enrollment well over 90 percent; big city districts run much lower.  Keep in mind that school districts are completely independent of any other political entity. 

    So we now have a situation where in nearby San Antonio (Bexar County), the health director asks parents to keep their kids home since she is not allowed to mandate it.

    If voters were sane a whole bunch of these elected officials would be out of jobs promptly after the next election, followed shortly by their appointed underlings.

     

    • #91
  2. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    I’ll leave this for others to analyze.

     

     

     

    • #92
  3. MiMac Thatcher
    MiMac
    @MiMac

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    MiMac (View Comment):
    But Cuomo’s narcissist personality would rather accept deaths than alter his policy.

    Is there a way to understand Cuomo’s behavior apart from narcissistic personality disorder? Sincere question. What (the hell) was he thinking? Was he “just following (CDC) orders?” I get very confused by people who do such obviously foolish things. We all make mistakes and act foolishly sometimes, but we rarely kill thousands of people with them.

    I used to think that Andrew Cuomo got the brains in the family and Chris got the looks-but now I realize that if that is true, than Chris is an imbecile (IQ of 26-50) since Andrew is, at best, a moron (IQ of 51-70).

    • #93
  4. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    I’ll leave this for others to analyze.

     

     

     

    So he was lying. Or he was wrong then. Or he is wrong now. One of those.

    That certainly assuages my fears.

    • #94
  5. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    MiMac (View Comment):
    I used to think that Andrew Cuomo got the brains in the family and Chris got the looks-but now I realize that if that is true, than Chris is an imbecile (IQ of 26-50) since Andrew is, at best, a moron (IQ of 51-70).

    I cannot get over how stupid Chris is. He has to be one of the dumbest anchors of all time. I get that all of those guys sell out for the money, but he is so bad at it. 

    Andrew is personality disordered. It’s going to be interesting to see where he can make the most of that. lol

     

    • #95
  6. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):
    You are acting like no localities bumped up against resources. They did. Each area has to manage this somehow without overdoing it, that’s all I’m saying. It’s not a black-and-white issue.

    One of the resources we’re going to run low on very, very soon is medical personnel. These people are exhausted. And many are taking “early” retirement to relieve their stress levels. Can’t say I blame them.

    We don’t have “shovel-ready” health care professionals. Meaning if we found a giant pile of Aztec diamonds buried in a secret vault under the Capitol building, you can’t buy into reality tens of thousands of people with the requisite skillset you might want or need, in the space of months, or years. This is true for armies as it is for accountants.

    So – when demand for resources exceeds supply, you slap more hours onto the backs of people already in those roles, and create incentives for more people to start entering the pipeline for that future need, assuming it will exist in perpetuity. Once COVID dies down, the resources you put in the pipeline might find themselves idled or eventually let go, because the demand has decreased, and no one, including hospitals, likes to pay for things unused.

    This will boil down to reimbursement rates, for government health care and private. Because if you want more ICU beds available during emergencies, pandemics, Godzilla attacks, etc, then you can have as many as you want, but you’ll have to be willing to pay for them. Considering Medicare/Medicaid’s cost transfers onto private insurance rates, this would cause private insurance rates to jump even higher, annually.

    Hospitals budget like any other business operation, generally. They look at historic caseload levels, the types of cases, how many treated, by department, including all the labor components (doctors, nurses, PAs), and overheads (HR, IT, etc), as get allocated across all the cost centers. Then they guesstimate what it’ll be next year, and boom – next year’s budget. Most states also set percentage budget increase levels, so whatever is guesstimated, will have to fall under that cap, and if/when it’s approved, you get what you get, and make do.

     

    Big Soup,

    Thanks!  I think this analysis is very good.

    But I would go one step further than this…

    “…then you can have as many as you want, but you’ll have to be willing to pay for them.”

    You will have to be willing to pay for them with a society that is permanently poorer, in real terms, in every other way. I mention it because we tend to incorrectly think of the cost as simply paying more in monetary terms; paying more money is by itself meaningless.  Only the value of consumption goods ultimately matters to society.

    • #96
  7. OldPhil Coolidge
    OldPhil
    @OldPhil

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    I’ll leave this for others to analyze.

     

     

    Here’s an AIER article on “Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong,” and at least 6 of them feature the eminent Dr. Fauci.

    Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong – AIER

     

    • #97
  8. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    OldPhil (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    I’ll leave this for others to analyze.

     

     

    Here’s an AIER article on “Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong,” and at least 6 of them feature the eminent Dr. Fauci.

    Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong – AIER

     

    Just to be clear, my personal comment was more about the asymptomatic spread thing. I really wish they would hurry up and figure that out. 

    • #98
  9. OldPhil Coolidge
    OldPhil
    @OldPhil

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    OldPhil (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    I’ll leave this for others to analyze.

     

     

    Here’s an AIER article on “Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong,” and at least 6 of them feature the eminent Dr. Fauci.

    Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong – AIER

     

    Just to be clear, my personal comment was more about the asymptomatic spread thing. I really wish they would hurry up and figure that out.

    I know, I was just ready to use any excuse to slam Fauci. 

    • #99
  10. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    The R0 is obviously way higher than the flu. People with the flu take themselves out of commission way faster, so the flu has a lower R0. But now they are telling us that only symptomatic people spread it. And every Tom Dick and Harry has to put a mask on. 

    I’m sure this makes sense to somebody. 

     

    • #100
  11. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Gazpacho Grande’ (View Comment):
    Ongoing business costs – some of the first things to go in budgets are these. It’s short-sighted and ultimately costs much more in the longer run.

    Having been in a business where lots of things were funded by government grants and by private grants, I learned early on that you can get money to build lots of new things. Nobody is going to give you money to maintain existing facilities.

    Our pastor was head of some YMCA committee that was doing a big expansion project. The common saying in his group was, “We could get the money to build a glass dome over the city of Battle Creek. But we could never get the money to maintain it.”

    People who give out money, whether government money or private foundation money, want to change the world. They want to make a big splash with their money. They have no motivation to spend money to maintain anything. In the case of government money, the public will not usually provide the necessary political support for just doing the maintenance.

    Maybe it’s different with the military, where the consequences of not maintaining things will come to bite us sooner. I don’t know very much about that world.

    One of the consequences of this was that we were motivated to convert all of our costs to up-front-costs. When buying new technology, we would buy it with the longest-possible warranties, because we could usually get money for that.  But after the warranty was up, we were on our own, and the maintenance costs had to come out of existing budgets.  I forget the right terminology, but the Algore tax for providing internet connectivity for public schools was just the opposite. That was because the big telecoms had political clout and wanted the recurring income: Tax dollars laundered through the public schools before going to the telecoms. 

    At one time we tried going together with the local public school district, which had a rural school right next to our rural campus, to go together to build internet fiber out to both of our facilities. But it was just too complicated because the school didn’t want upfront costs; it wanted everything to be bundled into the recurring costs. And we wanted just the opposite. It was too hard to get it to work that way, so we didn’t do the project together. There were a few other issues, too, but that was a showstopper. In the end we all got our fiber and it was all good, and maybe even better. But it took longer.

    • #101
  12. Z in MT Member
    Z in MT
    @ZinMT

    I don’t know how many hospitals had bed shortages, but one reason there were nursing and doctor shortages was because they had to quarantine when they were “exposed” or had symptoms even if they had previously tested positive for the virus and “recovered”.

    I haven’t figured out how people can believe in the vaccine, but simultaneously think having the virus doesn’t provide immunity.

    • #102
  13. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Z in MT (View Comment):
    I haven’t figured out how people can believe in the vaccine, but simultaneously think having the virus doesn’t provide immunity.

    That’s simple. Because Science! I had that very argument with someone from the county health department after I tested positive. She could not explain why the vaccine (developed a year ago) provided more benefit than the immunity I developed in early December through having the disease, but insisted I had to get the immunization anyway because it would “help.”

    (“Logic!” said the Professor [from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe] half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” I said the same thing to myself.)

    • #103
  14. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Of course. Never Trump and the Democrats went on and on about these guys:

     

     

    Now they are babbling about Kristie Noem. I don’t see it.

    • #104
  15. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

     

     

     

     

    • #105
  16. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

     

     

     

     

    In the spirit of scientific inquiry, we should cut spending and see if that helps.

    • #106
  17. MiMac Thatcher
    MiMac
    @MiMac

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    MiMac (View Comment):
    I used to think that Andrew Cuomo got the brains in the family and Chris got the looks-but now I realize that if that is true, than Chris is an imbecile (IQ of 26-50) since Andrew is, at best, a moron (IQ of 51-70).

    I cannot get over how stupid Chris is. He has to be one of the dumbest anchors of all time. I get that all of those guys sell out for the money, but he is so bad at it.

    Andrew is personality disordered. It’s going to be interesting to see where he can make the most of that. lol

    Whoa- hold on there- the dumbest anchor of all time is a VERY stiff competition- I mean you have got Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, Jim Acosta, all MSNBC anchors and a whole lot more. I do agree Chris Cuomo has the inside track but it isn’t a sure thing. Obviously, TIC since I don’t know any of the aforementioned people.

    • #107
  18. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    MiMac (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    MiMac (View Comment):
    I used to think that Andrew Cuomo got the brains in the family and Chris got the looks-but now I realize that if that is true, than Chris is an imbecile (IQ of 26-50) since Andrew is, at best, a moron (IQ of 51-70).

    I cannot get over how stupid Chris is. He has to be one of the dumbest anchors of all time. I get that all of those guys sell out for the money, but he is so bad at it.

    Andrew is personality disordered. It’s going to be interesting to see where he can make the most of that. lol

    Whoa- hold on there- the dumbest anchor of all time is a VERY stiff competition- I mean you have got Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, Jim Acosta, all MSNBC anchors and a whole lot more. I do agree Chris Cuomo has the inside track but it isn’t a sure thing. Obviously, TIC since I don’t know any of the aforementioned people.

    What gets me is, how supposedly educated he is. He sure as hell doesn’t act like it. 

    Lemon used to be a very serious reporter, but that’s not where the money is anymore.

    • #108
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