Coronavirus thread

[vcdgrips]

Blessings to all the medical professionals in this thread and your compatriots.

AND

Lets get this page off 666.

[Borderland]

This is different and interesting: Proof-of-concept study shows dogs can detect COVID-19 in human sweat

That's pretty amazing stuff but doesn't surprise me. I have a dog that was bred to have a keen sense of smell. She's a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon that was bread as a versatile hunting dog. In Europe I think they use them to track game and vermin. If there's a bird on the ground she can find it with her nose. Actually the bird doesn't even have to be there, just there recently, like in the last 15 minutes. Roaming around the property with her nose to the ground in the morning is like me reading the news with my coffee. Lots of critters pass thru during the night and I think she knows which ones.

[luckyman]

That's pretty amazing stuff but doesn't surprise me. I have a dog that was bred to have a keen sense of smell. She's a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon that was bread as a versatile hunting dog. If there's a bird on the ground she can find it with her nose. Actually the bird doesn't even have to be there, just there recently, like in the last 15 minutes. Roaming around the property with her nose to the ground in the morning is like me reading the news with my coffee. Lots of critters pass thru during the night and I think she knows which ones.

We just installed a fancy Nest outdoor camera that looks out over our driveway and minuscule front lawn. The main use for it so far is every time my GSD alerts on something in the morning I go back and see what wildlife came through in the night. Pretty entertaining how the dog pretty much follows the exact steps the wildlife made.

Edited to add: with all the Covid deliveries, my dog has decided the UPS / FedEx / Amazon drivers are part of the family, and ignores them now. I’m curious as to how she actually differentiates between those drivers and actual strangers that she still barks at.

[AKDoug]

That's pretty amazing stuff but doesn't surprise me. I have a dog that was bred to have a keen sense of smell. She's a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon that was bread as a versatile hunting dog. In Europe I think they use them to track game and vermin. If there's a bird on the ground she can find it with her nose. Actually the bird doesn't even have to be there, just there recently, like in the last 15 minutes. Roaming around the property with her nose to the ground in the morning is like me reading the news with my coffee. Lots of critters pass thru during the night and I think she knows which ones.

My son has a Grif on the way from a breeder in Utah. Finally, somebody in my family bought a useful dog. Can't wait to hunt birds with him.

[Stephanie B]

I have good insurance, and I'm guessing that if I survived an ICU stay on ECMO, my next stop after I got healthy enough to shuffle across the room would be to a bankruptcy attorney.

My insurance had a high deductible ($7,500) and then 80/20 copay, for which I paid $700/mo. At the time, it was my single largest monthly expense. Because I wasn't using it very much, they gave me a $3,000 drop in the deductible for 2018.

That February, I thought I was having a heart attack and drove to the ER (I know, I know). I wasn't, but to make a long story short, I was on a Holter monitor for three weeks and then went in for a pacemaker. Over the next three months, that personally cost me nearly $9K.

[Part of that involved fighting with a provider that was of the opinion that insurance was only a downpayment on the list price. Insurance company said "nothing doing, they can't do that, we have a deal with them, they take what we give them and charge you what we tell them they can." So paperwork went to the insurance company (which I heard through the rumor mill canceled their contract) and to the state AG for fraudulent billing. The provider game me my copay back and canceled the bill so I'd go away.]

I had the resources to pay it, but to nibble away on the hit to my savings, I took a look at my gun inventory and sold a number of them. Could have gotten a whole lot more if the political situation was different, but stuff like that comes on its own schedule. (If it had happened several months later, it would have cost me a helluva lot less.)

So I imagine that we are going to see a hell of a wave of medical bankruptcies coming down the pike for those who were under 65 when they got Covid.

It's going to affect a lot of other people. According to some reports, rural hospitals are sending a lot of their emergency non-covid cases to other places, because their ICUs are all Covid. Those cases are often getting transferred by medevac helos, which are most definitely not cheap.

[Lester Polfus]

My insurance had a high deductible ($7,500) and then 80/20 copay, for which I paid $700/mo. At the time, it was my single largest monthly expense. Because I wasn't using it very much, they gave me a $3,000 drop in the deductible for 2018.

That February, I thought I was having a heart attack and drove to the ER (I know, I know). I wasn't, but to make a long story short, I was on a Holter monitor for three weeks and then went in for a pacemaker. Over the next three months, that personally cost me nearly $9K.

[Part of that involved fighting with a provider that was of the opinion that insurance was only a downpayment on the list price. Insurance company said "nothing doing, they can't do that, we have a deal with them, they take what we give them and charge you what we tell them they can." So paperwork went to the insurance company (which I heard through the rumor mill canceled their contract) and to the state AG for fraudulent billing. The provider game me my copay back and canceled the bill so I'd go away.]

I had the resources to save it, but to nibble away on the hit to my savings, I took a look at my gun inventory and sold a number of them. Could have gotten a whole lot more if the political situation was different, but stuff like that comes on its own schedule. (If it had happened several months later, it would have cost me a helluva lot less.)

So I imagine that we are going to see a hell of a wave of medical bankruptcies coming down the pike for those who were under 65 when they got Covid.

It's going to affect a lot of other people. According to some reports, rural hospitals are sending a lot of their emergency non-covid cases to other places, because their ICUs are all Covid. Those cases are often getting transferred by medevac helos, which are most definitely not cheap.

I work very hard to make financially sound decisions, and not do stupid stuff like go bankrupt because we bought comic books and bubble gum on credit cards, but frankly my plan for a catastrophic medical event is to just declare medical bankruptcy at the time when it would be in my best interest. I'm entirely unapologetic about that, because even with good insurance, it's un-possible for me to save enough to cover something huge.

I've watched people charge up credit cards on stupid shit, knowing full well they were going to bankrupt it all, and that pisses me off to no end, but I don't begrudge anyone a medical bankruptcy.

I think we have no idea how deep this hole is going to be. Much of the discussion about COVID I've seen is a false dichotomy of "either you die or it's like the flu." The reality is there are plenty of people surviving with all sorts of life-long deficits. What that will do regarding the number of people on social security disability and etc remains to be seen.

I've halfway considered becoming a respiratory therapist as a retirement job...

We're living in interesting times.

[Savage Hands]

Damn. Just found out that an acquaintance of ours has died from COVID. Was out doing things like skydiving, hiking, and cooking turkey for immediate family up through thanksgiving, posting to FB like normal up through Dec 3rd (we are friends on FB), was dead by the 9th. Sobering. Her Husband is still in the ICU with the virus. Not much older than I am, too. Most def an eye-opener for folks in my community.


Totally an Odds/Stakes thing.

I'm so sorry to hear this, I'm now hearing of people I know directly that had or has it. Nobody has died but i know of one who was in the hospital for two weeks and is now out and recovering.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I have to say that although I am not a proponent of Canadian style health care, there are some pretty scary risks in running the privately insured gauntlet right now. In particular, shutting down businesses when people's health insurance is often tied to their job is going to wreck some lives, I think.

You don't want a single-payer system like we have but I think some degree of health care reform might improve the society as a whole.

Obviously I don't pretend to know the finer points of setting up such a system but rolling some base level of insurance into your state or federal income taxes at least puts you in the position of not being wiped out after losing your job.

That said I pay something like $1100/month for really lousy service and multi-year waits to see a specialist, so pick your poison, I guess.

[Totem Polar]

I'm so sorry to hear this, I'm now hearing of people I know directly that had or has it. Nobody has died but i know of one who was in the hospital for two weeks and is now out and recovering.

Thanks.
Yeah, I know a bunch of people who’ve had it and recovered. But just last night I heard that the guy who owned a nice little local Mexican restaurant died from C19. Probably just the odds—at first, it was paramedics and college students testing positive , but now it’s seemingly people in my age bracket dying of sudden onset symptoms. Which has obviously been a thing in other locations this whole time.

I had a relative who died early on, but she was in her 80s in an assisted living facility with a pile of comorbidities.

I still know more people who’ve died in traffic accidents or from cancer than from C19, but it’s always more personal when it’s personal. Go figure.

[RoyGBiv]

I've halfway considered becoming a respiratory therapist as a retirement job...

When my daughter was a Senior in HS she got accepted into a healthcare studies track that sent her to work (shadowing mostly but some hands on) in 2 local area hospitals, 5 days/week, 4 hours/day. In her first 2 weeks she (at 16 years old) saw two people taken off life support and two babies born (1 cesarean).... Did rotations through most departments over the course of 2 semesters.

At the end she told us.... (paraphrasing) "The only medical job I'm certain I can't handle is respiratory therapy. The sounds of sucking sputum made me too nauseous."

We are fortunate to have good insurance through wife's work. The financial fallout from this awfulness will be yet another gut punch for many of those afflicted.