Urbanization and CV19

[Nephrology]

Hmmm... suffer quietly, possibly dying of COVID in rural peace, or the same with 24 million loud people telling me to "fuggetaboutit!".

That is a tough choice. Tough choice, indeed.

If by "rural peace" you mean "asphyxiating in your home" ...

NYC is getting creamed because they are very densely populated, but there are good middle grounds.

Honestly, after all of this, it makes me really want to go back to Mayo Clinic for residency. Town of about 120k people but some of the most advanced medical facilities in the world. Plenty of opportunity to have a nice house and some land for a reasonable price and a world-class place to train. The clinical culture there is a bit...different... but you can't have everything in life i guess.

Yeah... that’s a little different than having good career option in the medical field there. Your GF’s mom and I probably know some of the sane people.

It would be a cool place to live with a doc’s income, for sure though.

I'll be a little constrained by professional considerations when I apply for residency/fellowship but may have more flexibility afterwards. Montana is on the list, as is Maine and New Hampshire. I could also probably do Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. Idaho too. Nevada, Arizona (high country) and Utah also on the list. Not from the South originally but some states do appeal, particularly Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas.

[Borderland]

Like any other tragedy or crisis, people with a strong opinion but weak justification for same are going to look to use the situation to try and bolster their stance. I expect the urban-hates to come out in force on this one, right up until their wife and kids are sick and they have to drive an hour to some borderline turd-world redneck hospital only to find out that their entire operation amounts to a “band-aid station” that only serves as a rest-stop for people with real health problems before moving on to an actual, urban, hospital on any normal day.

Most people have not one fucking clue how their health insurance actually works, what the inside of their nearest hospital actualy looks like, who the people that work their actually are, the quality of those people, etc.

https://apple.news/AhgUkq6gdRvS38aaGIjCClA

https://apple.news/AzJFq7u5AQWiCTd-JrLSiWA

I guess I'm not most people because I know all of that stuff. I'm still not living in a metro area with 3 million people. I did that for about 20 years of my life. You can have it. This black death thing just makes heavily populated urban areas even less desirable. So far over 1000 people have died in NY. They have a lot of good hospitals, no doubt.

[JHC]

I'm in a moderately sized rural county - about 140K population. We're only at 22 confirmed cases here, but I'd be willing to bet we've done less than 100 tests since this began. My concern is I don't think either of the hospitals in the county is anywhere near ready to handle a flood of ICU respiratory cases, and the nearest "big" hospitals are over an hour away in a city that has a MUCH higher rate and raw number of infections. So, while I think we're less likely to get infected, if anyone in the house needs hospital support, I think we're well behind the power curve compared to a major urban area.

I could be completely wrong, though, seeing how things are playing out in NYC.

It's a big and growing problem; rural hospitals.

"From 2013 to 2017, rural hospitals closed at a rate nearly double that of the previous five years.6 (See Figure 1) According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), recent rural hospital closures have disproportionately occurred among for-profit and Southern hospitals. Southern states accounted for 77 percent of rural hospital closures over that time period but only 38 percent of all rural hospitals in 2013."

https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...mergency-care/

[That Guy]

I used to have a 1-1.5 hour commute, each way.. It was brutal. At first I thought it was manageable, bit over the course of 3-5 years I gained weight, got weak, and generally had declining health. This was in my late 20's. The job had long hours, lots of stress, but was a "career builder" with lots of transferrable experience.

I would imagine the job you had was largely responsible for the effect you are putting down on the commute.

I can not afford to and do not want to live in the Big City where all the jobs are, so I commute some 40 miles each way. My girlfriend travels to the same city for work, so I have to drive by her workplace first - it takes me about 1.5h to commute one way on a normal day. (My worst trip home took about 2.5h during a nasty winter storm... Now that was brutal, but of course I only had to do it once.) If my girlfriend is not going to work I might get to my work place in one hour, if there is a lot of traffic it might take me 2 hours.

Is the commute time-consuming? Yes. Is it rough? Sometimes. Is it worth it, in order to not live in a city? Hell yes. And despite the time sink that work is, I've managed to inch my level of fitness slowly higher since moving here. I guess like in everything else in life, it's all about how much you value something. If living outside of the city is important enough, you'll figure out a way to make it work. If not, you won't. And you always have to trade something for something else - there are things I do not have time for, because work consumes so much of my time. But I do like to eat and to have some place to live, so (like an idiot) I keep going there.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/o...hospitals.html

Interesting article on gun violence not being slowed down by the virus outbreak.

We don’t yet know how the Covid-19 pandemic will affect gun violence. According to the Philadelphia Police Department, crime is down overall since social distancing mandates went into effect. But shootings have not slowed and even may be increasing.

Article then turns into a call for gun control measures.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I would imagine the job you had was largely responsible for the effect you are putting down on the commute.

I can not afford to and do not want to live in the Big City where all the jobs are, so I commute some 40 miles each way. My girlfriend travels to the same city for work, so I have to drive by her workplace first - it takes me about 1.5h to commute one way on a normal day. (My worst trip home took about 2.5h during a nasty winter storm... Now that was brutal, but of course I only had to do it once.) If my girlfriend is not going to work I might get to my work place in one hour, if there is a lot of traffic it might take me 2 hours.

Is the commute time-consuming? Yes. Is it rough? Sometimes. Is it worth it, in order to not live in a city? Hell yes. And despite the time sink that work is, I've managed to inch my level of fitness slowly higher since moving here. I guess like in everything else in life, it's all about how much you value something. If living outside of the city is important enough, you'll figure out a way to make it work. If not, you won't. And you always have to trade something for something else - there are things I do not have time for, because work consumes so much of my time. But I do like to eat and to have some place to live, so (like an idiot) I keep going there.

May also just be individual - I don't like long commute times myself. When I was commuting from my island place it took about an hour-hour and a half depending on the sea state and I found it exhausting. I did have other things going on that were wearing me down but I also hated the amount of time I was spending on the commute and wouldn't do it again five days per week, that's for sure.

[Joe in PNG]

I stated out very rural as a kid, and have spent a good part of my live living at least 30 minutes away from the nearest town.
I've had a few jobs where I've had to drive more than an hour to get to work, and that really sucks if you're working 12+ hour shifts.

More recently, I've been spoiled by living within an easy walk of my house.

If I had my druthers, I'd live on a large body of water that was easy walking distance from a shopping/ restaurant area.

[blues]

I stated out very rural as a kid, and have spent a good part of my live living at least 30 minutes away from the nearest town.
I've had a few jobs where I've had to drive more than an hour to get to work, and that really sucks if you're working 12+ hour shifts.

More recently, I've been spoiled by living within an easy walk of my house.

If I had my druthers, I'd live on a large body of water that was easy walking distance from a shopping/ restaurant area.

What a bunch of whiners. I lived 10 miles from the federal building in Manhattan and it was an hour to get there whether I drove, took the subway or jogged. (Okay, I couldn't jog that fast.)

[TAZ]

I stated out very rural as a kid, and have spent a good part of my live living at least 30 minutes away from the nearest town.
I've had a few jobs where I've had to drive more than an hour to get to work, and that really sucks if you're working 12+ hour shifts.

More recently, I've been spoiled by living within an easy walk of my house.

If I had my druthers, I'd live on a large body of water that was easy walking distance from a shopping/ restaurant area.

Dude, what did you do to your wife to make her kick you out and have to live within waking distance of your own home...

Commuting sucks, but it is what it is. You have to do what is needed to feed the family and pay bills sometimes.

I hate living in large cities, but unless I get a remote gig set up for CAD work so I can move to a cabin someplace remote, its the price I have to pay.

Densely packed sardines reliant on mass transit for life preserving measures = bad juju during any kind of viral outbreak. No matter how you try to social distance there is only so much space on a bus or subway car.

[Joe in PNG]

Dude, what did you do to your wife to make her kick you out and have to live within waking distance of your own home...

Commuting sucks, but it is what it is. You have to do what is needed to feed the family and pay bills sometimes.

I hate living in large cities, but unless I get a remote gig set up for CAD work so I can move to a cabin someplace remote, its the price I have to pay.

Densely packed sardines reliant on mass transit for life preserving measures = bad juju during any kind of viral outbreak. No matter how you try to social distance there is only so much space on a bus or subway car.

Oops- that should be "lives within easy walking distance of work".