zlacker

> If someone comes in for a broken arm and test positive, then they’re counted against the Covid numbers.

You know you have to substantiate such a wild claim, right? Nobody is counting patients with broken arms that happen to have Covid as Covid patients.

>>sofixa+(OP)
Dr. Birx back in 2020: "If Someone Dies With COVID-19 We Are Counting That As A COVID-19 Death" https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/08/dr_birx_u...

In March 2022 (this year), sleuthing by members of the public into inflated pediatric death counts resulted in the CDC deleting 72k alleged covid deaths, blaming a coding error for the overcount: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/cdc-coding-err...

In one county in Colorado, a coroner pointed out that 2 of 5 covid deaths were actually due to gunshot wounds: "Grand County Coroner Raises Concern On Deaths Among COVID Cases" (Dec 2020): https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/grand-county-covid-dea...

The way that a "covid case" or alleged "covid death" has been counted may have improved over the past 2 years, but 70+ thousand purported covid deaths were just admitted to have been illusory a few months ago and there most definitely have been significant financial incentives for hospitals to claim a particular patient had covid and further incentives for specific treatments (remdesivir, placing them on a vent, etc.).

>>sofixa+(OP)
This widely varies by countries, as well as often states. It entails what criteria you use for your statistic and how you collect the data. Because unfortunately data collection is one of those things that is assumed to be trivial, but actually quite difficult and costly. Especially in the beginning, you just took the rate of positively tested patients. Because you could do so at a single point in your hospital, the testing center. Figuring out information concerning individual patients means having to collect this information for every individual as well.

Let me also point out that this wasnt some grand failure. We were in a situation in which what ever information we could get was really helpful. But you have to be aware, that there is not magic box somewhere that spits out perfect information. All data collection has its limitations, its why we still know very little about long covid. Because getting that data is incredibly difficult, especially at scale.

>>sofixa+(OP)
I don't know why you're asking for substantiation, that is common knowledge to anyone paying attention. Almost half of hospital COVID-19 patients were admitted for something else and only incidentally tested positive on admission.

https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-patients-nyc-hospitals...

>>nradov+Bg
This is a common problem with COVID-19 threads on HN now. Happened to me several times in the past weeks. It's interesting but also very concerning just how large the knowledge gap has become between people who still support the public health restrictions and everyone else. Almost any fact you present, regardless of how basic or well known you think it is, will run into someone who thinks it's wild and crazy and has never encountered it before. That's true even if it's been admitted in public by the people who literally run the public health response!

The cause seems to be aggressive filter bubbling. We see it above too - there are highly upvoted people saying nothing more than "it can't be true, I don't believe it, it must be a right wing conspiracy". Any information that undermines government narratives just gets mentally erased, causing a distressed reaction of "that claim is CRAZY" to almost any attempt to discuss known data or facts.

>>nradov+Bg
Firstly the date on the link you provided is from Jan 11, 2022, 9:52 AM so it's a little dated when considering a fast moving pandemic.

Further googling reveals this similar headline: "Over 40% of NYC’s COVID-infected hospital patients admitted for other reasons"

This then begs the question, if in fact 60% of people are going to hospital because of COVID that indicates a very big problem.

Hospitals by their design are always meant to be full and their size will be determined based on an expected amount of demand.

If the hospital contains these unexpected COVID cases that then means many people who need to go to hospital will not be going to hospital only because the beds are taken up by these COVID patients.

>>jussij+uz
Respectfully, I think you are misinterpreting that headline. It's saying that of all the patients that tested positive for covid at the hospital, 40% of them were actually there for another reason. So a guy could be there for a broken arm and test positive for covid while there. He just needs to be treated for the broken arm, not covid.

>>jussij+uz
> Firstly the date on the link you provided is from Jan 11, 2022, 9:52 AM so it's a little dated when considering a fast moving pandemic.

January 2022 would include ~3/4ths of the pandemic's time and deaths so far.

>>wonder+DD
If you have just one patient in hospital with COVID and no other ailment that will represent a degradation of the 'normal' operation of the hospital.

If you have 10% of the hospital population in hospital with COVID (and just for COVID) you will have degraded the performance of the hospital by 10%.

This is because hospitals are designed to operate at maximum capacity (i.e all the beds are in use and there is a waiting list to get a bed). Every bed in use by a COVID patient will just add someone to the waiting list.

So my question would be what percentage of patients are in hospital because of COVID and only because of COVID?

That number is a very good measure of the pressure that hospital system will be under and my guess is it will be much greater than 10%.

>>jussij+5E2
Hospitals are not designed to operate at maximum capacity.

>>nradov+Oz5
On any given day, our hospitals — by design — operate at 90 to 100% capacity. That's why we have sought waivers to allow critical access hospitals to operate above their licensed capacity Peel wrote.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/01/jeff-jacks...