Slogans

[MuseChaser]

Hmmm. What does that mean, exactly? Got a reference?

Lots of doctors used to agree on cigarette brands. Hint: don't take up smoking!

Paul

https://mynbc15.com/news/coronavirus/letter-from-doctors-calls-on-president-trump-to-end-lockdown

This doesn't exactly address @Ryanb 's assertion that those isolated for a long time are "more susceptible to contracting the virus;" that strikes me as a little odd, too, and I hadn't heard that. However, there is a growing cadre of doctors who are calling attention to the huge negative impact our response TO the virus is causing to our collective health. We are certainly more susceptible to ill health as a result of our response.

 

[SkyChaser]

I think everyone is going to discover that they are susceptible to a lot of stuff they had previously acquired a degree of immunity from when the lockdown is over. Healthy immune systems that aren't being worked out get flabby just like muscles.

Maybe I have a weird perspective, but I am less interested in the total number of cases and more in the number and types of death. If COVID isn't killing the majority of people, does it matter if most of the state has the sniffles or a fever? That's pretty much status quo from late September until June where I live in a normal year, and we just call it "the bug going around". People get pneumonia and die from "what's going around" every year. Granted, I am not usually interested enough to be able to state the usual rates of transmission or the likelihood of death from pneumonia.

In my state, we have been holding pretty much even for non-nursing home/senior living deaths. For a long time. However, nursing homes and senior living centers are being hit hard. The weird part, and the thing that makes me fed up with how things are being handled, is that the nursing homes were locked down about a week before the state locked down. It was about a week and a half after the state locked down that the nursing homes had their first case, and it's only been the last week and a half or so that COVID has been starting to run rampant in the nursing homes. If lockdowns work, why are the most vulnerable not being protected by them? If I could ask one question of the public health experts that are supposed to be protecting the vulnerable public from all us death-bearing young people (who are, apparently, quite callous for wanting to get on with life despite these "unprecedented" times), that would be it. I don't mean to sound bitter or anything, but I am beyond frustrated. Personally, my life has hardly changed, since I am not a social butterfly, and I still have my job. I don't really have a dog in this fight - I just fail to see the logic and it is very annoying.

Explanation: I am an essential daycare worker. It is pretty worthless for me to wear any type of protective gear at my job, as I would need a full bodysuit to have it be worth it. I am of the opinion that many of the children, my family, and I already had it, as we were very sick in January and February, with textbook symptoms. Maybe my opinions are just bravado or denial so I don't get too scared to go to work, but I don't believe so.

I was going to ask to keep this discussion on just slogans, but so far, you all are behaving nicely. I think it is very interesting to hear all the different opinions, and I appreciate you all staying relatively civil. Getting a thread locked is a dubious honor I am not sure I want.

 

[RJM62]

There also

Very likely less than we will end up with the shutdown

Not to mention bad outcomes that don't result in deaths and don't show up in disease statistics.

A young man I know who suffers from PTSD is in jail right now. All of his therapy groups (which apparently had been working) had been shut down for two months, and he was getting edgy.

While standing in line at a store last week, some idiot tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He immediately spun around and decked him. Then a moonlighting cop who was working security ran over and tried to grab his arm. He got decked, too, and fell into a shelf that fell over and slightly injured a third person.

The young fellow takes responsibility for what he did, but he also believes it wouldn't have happened if his doctor visits and therapy groups hadn't been canceled.

I also had to talk another fellow who suffers from schizophrenia out of suicide a few times, for similar reasons, during the lockdown. He was still alive as of last night. He was finally able to see his shrink and get his meds adjusted last week, so maybe he'll be okay for a while.

I've also noticed an unusual number of calls on the emergency scanner regarding people doing bizarre things. We had one guy smearing his own feces on a gas station wall, a woman walking naked on the side of the road during torrential downpours with a tornado warning, a guy who claimed that strangers were "screwing under his bed," more than the usual OD calls, and way more than the usual number of people attempting or threatening suicide.

One of the DEP cops told me they're monitoring the Shavertown Bridge across the Pepacton Reservoir for jumpers. Apparently it's becoming a popular place for locals to end it all, so the DEP police are watching it closely. A bit to the East, we've also had two people (that I know of) jump from bridges crossing the Hudson in the past three days: A man jumped from the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, and a woman from the Bear Mountain Bridge. There may be others. Those are just the ones I know of.

It's a mess.

Rich

 

[MuseChaser]

There also


Not to mention bad outcomes that don't result in deaths and don't show up in disease statistics.

A young man I know who suffers from PTSD is in jail right now. All of his therapy groups (which apparently had been working) had been shut down for two months, and he was getting edgy.

While standing in line at a store last week, some idiot tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He immediately spun around and decked him. Then a moonlighting cop who was working security ran over and tried to grab his arm. He got decked, too, and fell into a shelf that fell over and slightly injured a third person.

The young fellow takes responsibility for what he did, but he also believes it wouldn't have happened if his doctor visits and therapy groups hadn't been canceled.

I also had to talk another fellow who suffers from schizophrenia out of suicide a few times, for similar reasons, during the lockdown. He was still alive as of last night. He was finally able to see his shrink and get his meds adjusted last week, so maybe he'll be okay for a while.

I've also noticed an unusual number of calls on the emergency scanner regarding people doing bizarre things. We had one guy smearing his own feces on a gas station wall, a woman walking naked on the side of the road during torrential downpours with a tornado warning, a guy who claimed that strangers were "screwing under his bed," more than the usual OD calls, and way more than the usual number of people attempting or threatening suicide.

One of the DEP cops told me they're monitoring the Shavertown Bridge across the Pepacton Reservoir for jumpers. Apparently it's becoming a popular place for locals to end it all, so the DEP police are watching it closely. A bit to the East, we've also had two people (that I know of) jump from bridges crossing the Hudson in the past three days: A man jumped from the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, and a woman from the Bear Mountain Bridge. There may be others. Those are just the ones I know of.

It's a mess.

Rich

We need an "appreciate" button. It's hard to "like" the information in that post.

 

[RyanB]

Here’s one for the pessimist’s (@timwinters). A new article about a years worth of suicide attempts in only 4 weeks. Closing up shop isn’t the solution...

www.nationalreview.com/news/a-years-worth-of-suicide-attempts-in-the-last-four-weeks-california-doctor-calls-for-end-to-lockdown/amp/

 

[RJM62]

We need an "appreciate" button. It's hard to "like" the information in that post.

After writing that, I went to pick up the mail. I received a thank-you letter for a donation I made to a local food pantry that primarily serves residents of the town I live in. It had a breakdown of how many people are currently receiving food from them. The total is about half the number of residents who live in the town. (The "town" is the layer between "villages" or "hamlets" and the county, in New York hierarchy.)

The bigger food pantry that serves the whole county is also struggling. I passed by a week or two ago while taking some hazmat to the dump, and the parking lot was full. Because pretty much everything else they do at that building is shut down, I have to assume that most or all of the people were there for food.

Rich