COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[JA]

Administration says it will reimburse hospitals for treating uninsured coronavirus patients

The Trump administration announced Friday that the federal government will reimburse hospitals treating uninsured patients for the novel coronavirus using funds allocated in a the recent relief package passed by Congress.

"Today, I can so proudly announce that hospitals and health care providers treating uninsured coronavirus patients will be reimbursed by the fed government using funds from the economic relief packed Congress passed last month," President Trump said at a White House briefing.

"This should alleviate any concerns uninsured Americans may have seeking the coronavirus treatment," he added.

[...]

Azar said the funds would be sent to providers through the same mechanism used for testing. He also said that providers would be forbidden from balance billing the uninsured as a condition for receiving the reimbursements and would be reimbursed at Medicare rates.

[JA]

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1247309259303456769?s=19

[JA]

https://twitter.com/RobertMaguire_/status/1247869120542117889?s=19
https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1247525565080338435?s=19

[JA]

https://twitter.com/npratc/status/1247988083376549888?s=19

[JA]

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1248664536078483462

How is Sweden’s economy holding up relative to the rest of Europe?  And is their health care system close to collapsing?

Sweden has 5.8 ICU beds per 100,000 people; the US has 34.7 ICU beds per 100,000 people; Spain has 9.7 ICU beds per 100,000 people. Their healthcare system has experienced extensive cuts and privatizations over the last 40 years as well, which has left them in a pretty poor situation for handling this crisis.

[JA]

Meat processing plants are the new hot spots

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/business/meat-plant-closures-smithfield/index.html

The one is Sioux Falls employs 3700 people and the number of positive cases was up to almost 300 at last count.

"The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply," the meat processor's chief executive, Kenneth Sullivan, said in a statement Sunday.
"It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," he said. "These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain."

Load up on the bacon boys.

Lettem get it. The workers are young anyways. The meat industry can't just halt.

Very brave of you.  How do you stop it from overwhelming the community at large?

If it overwhelms the community, so what? Most of these plants are located in rural towns with 3,000-10,000 people.

Here's a fun fact: people in small towns are people too.

[JA]

Meat processing plants are the new hot spots

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/business/meat-plant-closures-smithfield/index.html

The one is Sioux Falls employs 3700 people and the number of positive cases was up to almost 300 at last count.

"The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply," the meat processor's chief executive, Kenneth Sullivan, said in a statement Sunday.
"It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," he said. "These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain."

Load up on the bacon boys.

Lettem get it. The workers are young anyways. The meat industry can't just halt.

Very brave of you.  How do you stop it from overwhelming the community at large?

If it overwhelms the community, so what? Most of these plants are located in rural towns with 3,000-10,000 people.

Here's a fun fact: people in small towns are people too.

It's not like they are going to all die, the mortality rate on this thing is much much lower than expected.

Except we aren't talking about numbers in a data set, we are talking about premature deaths due to preventable spread from a novel virus. These people are someone's mother who loved and nurtured them; a beloved husband who takes care of his elderly partner; a friend and daughter who donates her time helping local kids, but who had the misfortune of a weakened immune system from recently overcoming cancer. I'm willing to sacrifice as much as I can to help make sure none of those people meet an awful, premature death - and I do consider each one of their lives worth immeasurable value, unlike material objects.

[JA]

Your Coronavirus Check Is Coming. Your Bank Can Grab It.

This week, the $1,200 CARES Act payments Congress approved in response to the coronavirus crisis will begin to appear in Americans’ bank accounts. The funds will be wired to eligible recipients who previously authorized the IRS to post their refunds (or Social Security payments) through direct deposit. This will speed relief far more quickly than having the IRS mail a check, which could take up to five months.

But the money may not make it into the hands of those who need it to pay bills, buy food, or just survive amid mass unemployment and widespread suffering. Individuals might first have to fend off their own bank, which has just been given the power to seize the $1,200 payment and use it to pay off outstanding debt.

Congress did not exempt CARES Act payments from private debt collection, and the Treasury Department has been reluctant to exempt them through its rulemaking authority. This means that individuals could see their payments transferred from their hands into the hands of their creditors, potentially leaving them with nothing.

[JA]

Are Rich Americans Getting $1.7 Million Stimulus Checks?

While wealthy Americans are not eligible for the comparatively measly $1,200 stimulus checks that are now being disbursed to many Americans, they are on pace to do even better. 43,000 taxpayers, who earn more than $1 million annually, are each set to receive a $1.7 million windfall, on average, thanks to a provision buried in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

[...]

“For those earning $1 million annually, a tax break buried in the recent coronavirus relief legislation is so generous that its total cost is more than total new funding for all hospitals in America and more than the total provided to all state and local governments,” said Doggett. “Someone wrongly seized on this health emergency to reward ultrarich beneficiaries, likely including the Trump family, with a tax loophole not available to middle class families. This net operating loss loophole is a loser that should be repealed.”

[JA]

A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat

According to the Tracking Project’s figures, nearly one in five people who get tested for the coronavirus in the United States is found to have it. In other words, the country has what is called a “test-positivity rate” of nearly 20 percent.

[...]

In that light, America’s 20 percent positivity rate is disquieting. The U.S. did almost 25 times as many tests on April 15 as on March 15, yet both the daily positive rate and the overall positive rate went up in that month

[...]

South Korea is not alone in bringing its positivity rate down: America’s figure dwarfs that of almost every other developed country. Canada, Germany and Denmark have positivity rates from 6 to 8 percent. Australia and New Zealand have 2 percent positivity rates. Even Italy—which faced one of the world’s most ravaging outbreaks—has a 15 percent rate. It has found nearly 160,000 cases and conducted more than a million tests. Virtually the only wealthy country with a larger positivity rate than the U.S. is the United Kingdom, where more than 30 percent of people tested for the virus have been positive.

Comparing American states to regions in other countries results in the same general pattern. In Lombardy, the hardest hit part of Italy, the positive rate today stands at about 28 percent. That’s comparable to the rate in Connecticut. But New York, so far the hardest hit state in the U.S., has an even higher rate of 41 percent. And in New Jersey, an astounding one in two people tested for the virus are found to have it.

[...]

Five other states have a positive rate above 20 percent: Michigan, Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Colorado. They are spread across the country, and they all have obviously serious outbreaks. Each of the eight states with positive rates over 20 percent has, individually, reported more COVID-19 deaths than South Korea.

[...]

But there is another way to interpret the decline in new cases: The growth in the number of new tests completed per day has also plateaued. Since April 1, the country has tested roughly 145,000 people every day with no steady upward trajectory. The growth in the number of new cases per day, and the growth in the number of new tests per day, are very tightly correlated.

Tldr: It's hypothesized that, based on America's 20% positivity results on the Covid-19 tests, which are rationed and mostly reserved for only the most ill, the reason for our plateau in new cases is because of a plateau in new testing; the virus's spread is outpacing our testing so far. We aren't rounding the curve, we are simply producing insufficient data to accurately track the pandemic's actual spread.

[JA]

That's because America is a nation in decline. The coronavirus epidemic is merely another sign of our gradual deterioration, and indeed, it has accelerated it.

I think it broke America forever.

The virus didn't break America, it simply helped to "heighten the contradictions" that had already existed in our society and bring them forward.

[JA]

https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1251607949736161281

We've hit a plateau all right. A testing plateau.



Even the CDC's numbers are showing the same thing:

It's likely a combination of both factors.

[JA]

Very powerful Biden ad hitting Trump's response to the virus:

https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1251609321353490433

Ah, I see we are all diving down the rabbit hole of blaming China and making this a "I hate Chinese more" d*ck measuring competition.

Will it be effective though? Yes. Will it be worth it in the end?...