Coronavirus (No politics)

#2,302
#2,302
VolnJC said:
Probably too early for this question but have we just don'e a poor job globally of identifying who has COVID-19? Because even as bad as the numbers appear they aren't close to the seasonal flu or H1N1 cases
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We've done a poor job at everything. With remaining calm at the top of the list
 
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#2,303
#2,303
ButchPlz said:
For one, a 3% profit is not bad.

Second, by thrive I mean even getting a chance to start up and grow. It would be next to impossible for you or me to go and start your own health insurance company, because it would be nearly impossible for us to navigate the process required to get started. And then once started, it would be next to impossible for us to follow the laws and meet every single legal compliance requirement there is.

Now, I am good with keeping people safe. But our legal environment in healthcare was essentially designed by the insurance companies to ensure that they don't have to innovate or worry about competition other than what's already out there. And hospitals are right there with them, with no incentive to change the status quo.

If our legal environment merely made it easier for alternates to exist, and you and I had the ability to price shop between hospitals and doctors, or use different cash payment options, things would improve so much.

Case in point, my wife and I shopped around for dental work in Peru- I had two badly chipped teeth repaired and both of us got full cleaning for $70 cash. She did a full lab panel with two doctor consultations for $100 at a private clinic. These types of options, and the ability to shop for healthcare, are virtually nonexistent here.
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I had a heart stress test ( treadmill) done in Peru at one of the top hospitals by a prominent cardiologist. He himself conducted the test, not a tech. Consulation before/after and exam itself- less than 100 USD.
 
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#2,305
#2,305
Right now the mortality rate is 17%, based on closed cases. That being said, the likelihood that the mortality rate is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-5% in the end is very likely. That means is much deadlier than the flu, even though it has fewer cases. That's even if we find a treatment or prevention method in the near future.

Stay safe my VN brothers and sisters!
 
#2,306
#2,306
g8terh8ter_eric said:
Right now the mortality rate is 17%, based on closed cases. That being said, the likelihood that the mortality rate is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-5% in the end is very likely. That means is much deadlier than the flu, even though it has fewer cases. That's even if we find a treatment or prevention method in the near future.

Stay safe my VN brothers and sisters!
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I'd say anything above 2 is outlandish. We'll never know the exact amount of cases. The modelers will have to determine somewhere down the road.
 
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#2,307
#2,307
ButchPlz said:
For one, a 3% profit is not bad.

Second, by thrive I mean even getting a chance to start up and grow. It would be next to impossible for you or me to go and start your own health insurance company, because it would be nearly impossible for us to navigate the process required to get started. And then once started, it would be next to impossible for us to follow the laws and meet every single legal compliance requirement there is.

Now, I am good with keeping people safe. But our legal environment in healthcare was essentially designed by the insurance companies to ensure that they don't have to innovate or worry about competition other than what's already out there. And hospitals are right there with them, with no incentive to change the status quo.

If our legal environment merely made it easier for alternates to exist, and you and I had the ability to price shop between hospitals and doctors, or use different cash payment options, things would improve so much.

Case in point, my wife and I shopped around for dental work in Peru- I had two badly chipped teeth repaired and both of us got full cleaning for $70 cash. She did a full lab panel with two doctor consultations for $100 at a private clinic. These types of options, and the ability to shop for healthcare, are virtually nonexistent here.
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Several things here. 3% is not good. Average desired profit for a normal business is at least 10%. We sit here and talk about how thin the margins are for restaurants, who will generally be at the 5% mark but insurance at 3% is considered good? There are layers of problems in the health industry space but insurance isn't the boogeyman here. Can they make disagreeable decisions? Sure. So can every company across all industries. I'll spare the thread the specific issues of every layer.

The nature of insurance is a difficult industry to start up because of business strategy. Hard to build from the bottom because of exposure percentage.

I think it all starts with hospital corporations because here is where I agree with you....Price shopping should 100% be available and transparent.
 
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#2,308
#2,308
RavinDave said:
Don’t forget there may be a lag time of 2 weeks or more, between the time a given case is identified (confirmed) and when it is resolved/recovered. So recoveries will always be lagging behind when the rate of spread is increasing.
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I though through that and decided not to cal that out because the ratio he was interested in was deaths/(deaths+recoveries) and there is a long lag between when a case is identified and death. Sounds like multiple weeks as well.
 
#2,310
#2,310
utvols88 said:
Several things here. 3% is not good. Average desired profit for a normal business is at least 10%. We sit here and talk about how thin the margins are for restaurants, who will generally be at the 5% mark but insurance at 3% is considered good? There are layers of problems in the health industry space but insurance isn't the boogeyman here. Can they make disagreeable decisions? Sure. So can every company across all industries. I'll spare the thread the specific issues of every layer.

The nature of insurance is a difficult industry to start up because of business strategy. Hard to build from the bottom because of exposure percentage.

I think it all starts with hospital corporations because here is where I agree with you....Price shopping should 100% be available and transparent.
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My friend, the average profit margin across all industries across all sizes of business is right at 6%, not 10%. Grocery stores, as an example, make around 1%. WalMart hovers around 3%. A 3% margin is absolutely not bad.

I'm not trying to make insurance companies out to be boogeymen. I'm saying they have done what they can to make the market locked down via laws. That's absolutely true- you and I couldn't start an insurance firm not because of the financial exposure, but because the immense cost we would have to assume to deal with the legal crap that has been created. If it was purely financial exposure you'd still have people getting into the market, or being creative with strategies to get around it. Instead, our laws (*cough*obamacare*cough*), many written by insurance companies themselves, have gutted most of the opportunity for creativity and innovation in getting people covered financially purely by making certain innovations legally non-viable.

Healthcare in this country is a mess from many, many sides. Insurance companies are a big part of it.
 
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#2,311
#2,311
g8terh8ter_eric said:
Right now the mortality rate is 17%, based on closed cases. That being said, the likelihood that the mortality rate is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-5% in the end is very likely. That means is much deadlier than the flu, even though it has fewer cases. That's even if we find a treatment or prevention method in the near future.

Stay safe my VN brothers and sisters!
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The mortality rate will end up nowhere near even 2%. When you have almost all non-risk people being turned away from testing and most people showing very mild to mild symptoms, the numbers are self-selecting into worst-case patients and people with severe issues.
 
#2,312
#2,312
allvol123 said:
I'd say anything above 2 is outlandish. We'll never know the exact amount of cases. The modelers will have to determine somewhere down the road.
Click to expand...

The biggest concern is healthcare rationing in terms of ICU beds which could significantly increase mortality. Anchoring arguments to a mortality rate that you “feel” will happen doesn’t convince me that we should start being complacent (under the guise of “remaining calm”). We should remain calm and rational (see, leaving the TP and food on the shelves without hoarding).
 
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#2,313
#2,313
VolnJC said:
Probably too early for this question but have we just don'e a poor job globally of identifying who has COVID-19? Because even as bad as the numbers appear they aren't close to the seasonal flu or H1N1 cases
Click to expand...

By 6/25/2009 the US has 27,717 lab-confirmed H1N1 cases in the US (that was about 9 weeks after the first case, much like we are).

So we are seeing many more cases over 100,000) of SARS-CoV-2 at this point. I would have to research how number of tests administered differs. Is it more likely people get tested for SARS-CoV-2 than seasonal flu (of which H1N1 is one now that people get every year as a seasonal flu)? I think that’s definitely possible given all the concern over it. So maybe that ratio of cases/lab-confirmed cases will be lower.

If I asked you how many people had seasonal flu so far this year, what would you tell me? 30-40 million? We’ve only lab-confirmed about 280 thousand cases. The rest is modeled.

All the flu results you read bout are modeled. An issue - maybe the big issue when it comes to controlling- with SARS-CoV-2 is that we don’t have good data on transmission or mortality. For example we say we have about 30-50k flu deaths but we’ve only recorded 5,140 lab-confirmed cases this year.

In Italy, towns that would typically see 30 people die this time of year are seeing 150 people die. But they only have 30 lab-confirmed COVID-19 deaths. Could it be the same flu effect where there are more deaths to CV than we are lab-confirming? Possibly. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait for better modeling.
 
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#2,315
#2,315
xavierbballfan said:
The biggest concern is healthcare rationing in terms of ICU beds which could significantly increase mortality. Anchoring arguments to a mortality rate that you “feel” will happen doesn’t convince me that we should start being complacent (under the guise of “remaining calm”). We should remain calm and rational (see, leaving the TP and food on the shelves without hoarding).
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But you anchor to your "feels". Also, the alternative to the current approach doesnt necessarily equate to complacent.
 
#2,316
#2,316
allvol123 said:
But you anchor to your "feels". Also, the alternative to the current approach doesnt necessarily equate to complacent.
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Well, and besides that, we've not even seen this huge breakout of wide scale healthcare rationing. Some? Sure. But this healthcare collapse that's been predicted isn't happening.
 
#2,317
#2,317
Eventually, we will have to reopen for business and it will probably happen before there is any sure-fire vaccine or cure. There are a lot of people in the workforce who should have retired by now but felt like they couldn't due to the hits they took in 2008. Those people will soon have a very difficult choice to face. A lot of those people have a fixed income, just not enough to maintain their standard of living where they are. If those people could be encouraged to relocate to isolated, economically distressed small towns it could be a win/win. The retirees would have a lower overhead and they would bring a stream of revenue into areas that have very little.
 
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#2,318
#2,318
ButchPlz said:
Well, and besides that, we've not even seen this huge breakout of wide scale healthcare rationing. Some? Sure. But this healthcare collapse that's been predicted isn't happening.
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Also, we are looking at society only thru a medical lens at this point. Seems extremely dangerous. But I will stop now since this is the pub forum.
 
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#2,322
#2,322
allvol123 said:
But you anchor to your "feels". Also, the alternative to the current approach doesnt necessarily equate to complacent.
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If by feels you mean actual data, then sure.

The interventions should be based on that and not some talking points about a false choice between the economy and medicine. I find it hard to believe that the economy would be thriving if the models (based on data rather than emotion) are correct and we had millions of people infected over the next three months, hospitals overwhelmed.
 
#2,323
#2,323
xavierbballfan said:
If by feels you mean actual data, then sure.

The interventions should be based on that and not some talking points about a false choice between the economy and medicine. I find it hard to believe that the economy would be thriving if the models (based on data rather than emotion) are correct and we had millions of people infected over the next three months, hospitals overwhelmed.
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Models based on many assumptions. But yea, no feels there. Lol.
 
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