I didn't watch this one yet either, but I am still verifying things with my own eyes regardless. I haven't been to NY or anywhere else to look at hospitals, but I'm skeptical about anything or anybody when the numbers don't add up, period.
In our state, NC, the "corona crisis" numbers (cases and deaths) are just now equal to this year flu season numbers, which has been a comparatively mild one. Since I've only heard a few times of short term rises in hospitalized patients during a really severe flu season, I never expected to see any healthcare problems with this virus in our area - and haven't.
Now to that question about military service and citizenship. You may recall I've looked into citizenship issues before and found lots of info from various court cases.
You're right when it comes to the
U.S. military - there isn't any issue at all.
However one of the few exceptions when your U.S. citizenship CAN be taken away or self renounced is if you join a
foreign military. That may be what the video was talking about. If someone knows for sure they can chime in.
travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/Advice-about-Possible-Loss-of-US-Nationality-Dual-Nationality/Loss-US-Nationality-and-Foreign-Military-Service.htmlCouple of things may be going on there. Actually more than a couple...
1. It's pretty obvious that bigger cities have bigger problems. Close proximity helps virus transmission. Rural areas have less cases.
2. Age of victims. This is where Italy got torched...Older patient population, living with their family, not on their own.
3. Bed utilization. The ability to care for Wuhan Coronavirus patients depends a lot on ICU beds or isolation rooms, which then trickles down to regular rooms with appropriate staff. Not all nurses are ACLS certified, not all can work in an ICU or ED setting. For example, a psych nurse or a pediatric nurse is not who you want manning the front lines of the ED or walking the ICU floors. You will use them if you
have to.
4. Duration. Don't compare a few weeks of corona virus infection with the flu season. Two different critters. A) The bad corona virus patients who present to the hospital generally require more resources before they die, (flu resolves or knocks you off pretty quickly) and the flu season spans several months. The aim of flattening the curve has nothing to do with total numbers of patients sick or dying, but everything to do with overwhelming the healthcare system.
Until I see something in the final numbers that convinces me otherwise, I'm still going to use flu stats as a comparison for 2 reasons.
1) They may not be exactly the same, but even flu strains vary enough year to year to give a wide range of results and so far the numbers are staying pretty close (covid-19 vs. influenza).
2) The fact that the overall numbers are similar between the two is what I'm trying to convince everyone to focus on.
Very few people alive today have EVER seen what's going on right now in the U.S. and most of us have seen a lot over the years.
I'll try to go in chronological order but here's just a partial list.
*Civil rights movement - protests, riots, killings, marches, etc.
*Anti-war protests (Vietnam mostly) with similar actions as above
*Environmental movement, including nuclear, petroleum, pollution in general. Not as violent but sometimes close.
*Epidemics - polio, swine flu, Legionnaires disease, AIDS, E-Coli, Ebola and more.
*Natural disasters - wildfires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, heat waves.
*Terrorist attacks - 9/11 stands out but there have been many more going back to hijackings when I was a kid.
Now to try and put this in perspective, I have to reference a few things before I was born. These few come to mind.
*Japanese internment camps during WWII
*Prohibition
*Reconstruction Period after Civil War
Only the last 3 come close to the same type of authoritarian overreach and violation of basic constitutional liberties that I am witnessing today. And I'll note that they all had terrible results as I feel this will too.
And the only reason repeatedly given is because this virus is nothing like the flu, because we obviously wouldn't resort to tactics not seen in our lifetimes if it wasn't the worse thing we've ever seen, right?
The "official" start of this in the U.S. is documented mid January according to most sources.
It's now mid April. That's 3 months if you don't assume it really started earlier and we weren't aware of it. That start date is actually traced to the 1st
death so it's very likely that it was around earlier since 80% have minor or no symptoms at all.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191It's probably close although it doesn't explain why it hasn't spread from west to east as it would have been assumed to do in a normal virus transmission. That's because it came in thru major hubs like international airports and kept coming in throughout this ordeal. As far as I know it still is.
Now look at flu stats from the CDC.
www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.htmlMost of it runs from December to April with millions sick and several hundred thousand hospitalized annually. I've already quoted the death toll before.
Sounds terrible doesn't it? How did we ever get thru it without declaring a national emergency and shutting down every school, restaurant, barbershop, public park and every sport or entertainment event for the whole season?
Makes this thing sound bigger than the Cuban missile crisis, 1973 OPEC oil embargo (forgot those two) and WWIII rolled into one, huh?
