COVID-19 Thread

[adambr2]

My brother and sister-in-law‘s business has run into the issue of employees barking at the idea of returning to work. It’s service industry workers, and most have college/grad degrees working part time. It’s not a safety issue. They are upset that if they return to work, they’ll miss out on the extended unemployment benefits, which could amount to a $500+ weekly paycut.

 

There's definitely a danger of that anytime you are incentivizing people to stay home.

 

Unfortunately, I am not sure what the right solution is. Not helping out the millions of unemployed beyond the meager base unemployment wages obviously isn't a great alternative either.

[Fear The Chorizo]

My brother and sister-in-law‘s business has run into the issue of employees barking at the idea of returning to work. It’s service industry workers, and most have college/grad degrees working part time. It’s not a safety issue. They are upset that if they return to work, they’ll miss out on the extended unemployment benefits, which could amount to a $500+ weekly paycut.

 

That's being incredibly short sighted on their end - because there will be other people that take those jobs who currently arent getting that extra (or any) unemployment - and then once the extra $500 weekly runs out for these other folks there wont be the same job for them to return to and jobs at different places wont be easy to find.

 

I thought there was something in the legislation that businesses had to report whether people were offered their jobs back and refused, which may cancel that extra unemployment for those individuals? Not sure about that, though.

[homer]

Thought this was interesting as it pertains to antibody tests and the rates of false positives:

https://davidepstein.com/antibody-tests-when-95-percent-accurate-isnt-enough/

 

If a test to detect a disease whose prevalence is 1/1000 has a false positive rate of 5%, what is the chance that a person found to have a positive result actually has the disease, assuming you know nothing about the person's symptoms or signs? The test had perfect "sensitivity," i.e. that it detected all true positives.

 

answer:

 

The most common answer the doctors and med students gave was that the patient has a 95% chance of actually having the disease. The correct answer is that there is only about a 2% chance that the patient actually has the disease, or 1.96% to be exact.

 

Say you're testing 10,000 people. Because the disease prevalence is 1 in 1,000, 10 people in the sample have the disease. The test has perfect sensitivity, so all 10 of those people get a true positive result. But remember that the false positive rate is 5%, so 5 out of every 100 people tested will get a false positive. In total, 500 people out of 10,000 tested will get a false positive. So the chance of a patient who tests positive actually having the disease is 10/510, or 1.96%.

 

[Outlander]

Correct regarding unemployment and refusing work, but not sure how that will play out with Covid-19. It puts people in a tough spot because if they don't feel safe they still have to report to work or risk losing a job and unemployment benefits.

[Machu Peach]

False positives vs false negatives is an interesting topic. Obviously you want to minimize both, but for a lot of tests you're really forced which one is going to be be the bigger problem by adjusting the line of what is considered to be a positive result.

 

For most things

True positive - Good, people who need treatment get it

False positive - Somewhat bad, people get unnecessary treatment

True negative - Good, people who don't need treatment don't get it

False negative - Very bad, people that need treatment don't get it.

 

However that paradigm is somewhat reversed when discussing serological testing and vaccines

True positive - Good, people who don't need revaccination don't get it

False positive - Very bad, people who need revaccination don't get it

True negative - Good, people who need revaccination get it

False negative - A little bad, people who don't need revaccination get it.

[jjfanec]

My brother and sister-in-law‘s business has run into the issue of employees barking at the idea of returning to work. It’s service industry workers, and most have college/grad degrees working part time. It’s not a safety issue. They are upset that if they return to work, they’ll miss out on the extended unemployment benefits, which could amount to a $500+ weekly paycut.

 

That's being incredibly short sighted on their end - because there will be other people that take those jobs who currently arent getting that extra (or any) unemployment - and then once the extra $500 weekly runs out for these other folks there wont be the same job for them to return to and jobs at different places wont be easy to find.

 

I thought there was something in the legislation that businesses had to report whether people were offered their jobs back and refused, which may cancel that extra unemployment for those individuals? Not sure about that, though.

 

This article says you cannot still receive unemployment benefits if you refuse to return to work. You need to have a documented health concern.

https://www.inquirer.com/economy/called-back-work-unemployment-pays-more-coronavirus-20200505.html

[Fear The Chorizo]

Somebody help me understand the reasoning/justification for the following scenario, because I've seen it frequently over the past few weeks and it boggles my mind how it could be viewed as being "safer"...

 

There are many public spaces (forest preserves, parks, playgrounds, trails, etc) people have been flocking to in order to maintain sanity and get some fresh air from a safe social distance, which normally have restrooms opened for public use. These restrooms have been shuddered over the past couple months and even continue to remain closed following MN's stay at home order formally ended earlier this week. In some cases, if you gotta go you just need to find a restroom somewhere else, but in many cases there are now porta-potties staged right next to deadbolted restroom buildings. WTH?? Why not open these facilities, which have running water and more sanitary options for cleaning hands? I'm pretty sure the answer has more to do with various park services workers/contractors no longer being employed by whomever is operating the public space to keep those restrooms maintained, and it's cheaper just slapping a porta-potty in its place that can fester in the summer sun for a whole 1-2 weeks between cleanouts. It's disgusting!

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I don't follow exactly. No one is maintaining the restrooms? Then that answers the question. You can't just open a public restroom without anyone working it, plus that's a magnet for all kinds of unsavory people all hours of the night.

[adambr2]

I don't follow exactly. No one is maintaining the restrooms? Then that answers the question. You can't just open a public restroom without anyone working it, plus that's a magnet for all kinds of unsavory people all hours of the night.

 

POJs still have to be maintained, too. Isn't it easier and more sanitary to maintain a public restroom than a POJ? I can't think of any advantage of a POJ over a public restroom besides being portable and cheaper. They certainly aren't more sanitary.

 

Also given that millions are being paid to stay home, you'd think there would be a little extra money in the budget for local governments to provide maintenance and security for a few public parks.

[Outlander]

If the MN stay at home order has ended I don't understand why they wouldn't be maintained.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I don't follow exactly. No one is maintaining the restrooms? Then that answers the question. You can't just open a public restroom without anyone working it, plus that's a magnet for all kinds of unsavory people all hours of the night.

 

POJs still have to be maintained, too. Isn't it easier and more sanitary to maintain a public restroom than a POJ? I can't think of any advantage of a POJ over a public restroom besides being portable and cheaper.

 

Public bathrooms, especially ones in parks with little or no supervision, are invitations for vandalism, prostitution and drugs. Many are deadbolted Dec-Apr for this reason.

[LouisEly]

Somebody help me understand the reasoning/justification for the following scenario, because I've seen it frequently over the past few weeks and it boggles my mind how it could be viewed as being "safer"...

 

There are many public spaces (forest preserves, parks, playgrounds, trails, etc) people have been flocking to in order to maintain sanity and get some fresh air from a safe social distance, which normally have restrooms opened for public use. These restrooms have been shuddered over the past couple months and even continue to remain closed following MN's stay at home order formally ended earlier this week. In some cases, if you gotta go you just need to find a restroom somewhere else, but in many cases there are now porta-potties staged right next to deadbolted restroom buildings. WTH?? Why not open these facilities, which have running water and more sanitary options for cleaning hands? I'm pretty sure the answer has more to do with various park services workers/contractors no longer being employed by whomever is operating the public space to keep those restrooms maintained, and it's cheaper just slapping a porta-potty in its place that can fester in the summer sun for a whole 1-2 weeks between cleanouts. It's disgusting!

It think it's because every porta-potty I've been in the last few years has had hand sanitizer in it (and I always pump the hand sanitizer after I turn the lock on the door), and nobody touches anything in a porta-potty other than the door lock and the hand sanitizer.

[NeedMoreFans]

Guidance our city parks department has says that in order to open restrooms in parks, they must be sanitized daily. We contract it out and the contract has them cleaning restrooms 5 times a week, so we're looking at opening fewer restrooms in the parks and seeing if the company will come in every day. POJ don't have the element of flushing toilets which may cause further spread of germs in the bathroom.

 

On the topic of antibody tests, of the 4000 performed in Dane County last week, 1.5% of them came back as positive.

[Fear The Chorizo]

I live in MN, and had no idea this was still going on - I believe MN has the worst rate of Covid-related deaths in the country among long term care facility residents compared to its total number of deaths (608 of its 748 deaths are from LTCF residents - over 80%).

 

https://www.startribune.com/minn-nursing-homes-already-site-of-81-of-covid-19-deaths-still-taking-in-infected-patients/570601282/

 

Given all we know about Covid-19 and who the most vulnerable are to dying from it, why is this not the absolute last option on the table for sending recovering covid patients that were hospitalized by now? Especially since the perceived hospital bed shortage concern that initiated the urgency to discharge manageable recovering cases from hospitals as quickly as possible hasn't come close to materializing anywhere outside of NY/NJ?

 

Stay at home, bend the curve, slow the spread, protect the elderly and immuno-compromised at all costs, but if you unfortunately get Covid-19 bad enough to go to a hospital but wind up not needing to be intubated, we'll ship you over to a nursing home to negate all the other protective measures society has taken to keep infected people from those facilities. Kids can't go to school or play baseball, families can't go out to dinner, couples can't go watch a movie...many working aged people can't earn income at their business/job all in effort to protect the elderly - but this insane policy still is being followed. Unbelieveable.

 

Seriously, during these stay at home orders, why weren't countless other places that sat idle engaged about modifying their use to take in recovering patients instead of this policy? I would think hotels situated near hospitals would be ideal locations for temporary use.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I don't follow exactly. No one is maintaining the restrooms? Then that answers the question. You can't just open a public restroom without anyone working it, plus that's a magnet for all kinds of unsavory people all hours of the night.

 

POJs still have to be maintained, too. Isn't it easier and more sanitary to maintain a public restroom than a POJ? I can't think of any advantage of a POJ over a public restroom besides being portable and cheaper. They certainly aren't more sanitary.

 

Also given that millions are being paid to stay home, you'd think there would be a little extra money in the budget for local governments to provide maintenance and security for a few public parks.

 

Those porta-potties are supplied by a rental company, most of which are also companies that pump and clean septic systems, are are equipped with the tools to service and clean them in a sanitary manner. Most long-term porta-potty rentals are put on a service schedule based on how many people are using them per day. Busy ones will be cleaned and sanitized every day.

 

In this case, it is probably more efficient for the government entity to pay to rent and service the portable restrooms than it is to purchase the proper sanitary materials and pay their maintenance staff to service and completely clean and sanitize the regular restrooms every day.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I live in MN, and had no idea this was still going on - I believe MN has the worst rate of Covid-related deaths in the country among long term care facility residents compared to its total number of deaths (608 of its 748 deaths are from LTCF residents - over 80%).

 

https://www.startribune.com/minn-nursing-homes-already-site-of-81-of-covid-19-deaths-still-taking-in-infected-patients/570601282/

 

Given all we know about Covid-19 and who the most vulnerable are to dying from it, why is this not the absolute last option on the table for sending recovering covid patients that were hospitalized by now? Especially since the perceived hospital bed shortage concern that initiated the urgency to discharge manageable recovering cases from hospitals as quickly as possible hasn't come close to materializing anywhere outside of NY/NJ?

 

Stay at home, bend the curve, slow the spread, protect the elderly and immuno-compromised at all costs, but if you unfortunately get Covid-19 bad enough to go to a hospital but wind up not needing to be intubated, we'll ship you over to a nursing home to negate all the other protective measures society has taken to keep infected people from those facilities. Kids can't go to school or play baseball, families can't go out to dinner, couples can't go watch a movie...many working aged people can't earn income at their business/job all in effort to protect the elderly - but this insane policy still is being followed. Unbelieveable.

 

Seriously, during these stay at home orders, why weren't countless other places that sat idle engaged about modifying their use to take in recovering patients instead of this policy? I would think hotels situated near hospitals would be ideal locations for temporary use.

 

What hotel is going to sign up for being the COVID19 infirmary?

[Fear The Chorizo]

I live in MN, and had no idea this was still going on - I believe MN has the worst rate of Covid-related deaths in the country among long term care facility residents compared to its total number of deaths (608 of its 748 deaths are from LTCF residents - over 80%).

 

https://www.startribune.com/minn-nursing-homes-already-site-of-81-of-covid-19-deaths-still-taking-in-infected-patients/570601282/

 

Given all we know about Covid-19 and who the most vulnerable are to dying from it, why is this not the absolute last option on the table for sending recovering covid patients that were hospitalized by now? Especially since the perceived hospital bed shortage concern that initiated the urgency to discharge manageable recovering cases from hospitals as quickly as possible hasn't come close to materializing anywhere outside of NY/NJ?

 

Stay at home, bend the curve, slow the spread, protect the elderly and immuno-compromised at all costs, but if you unfortunately get Covid-19 bad enough to go to a hospital but wind up not needing to be intubated, we'll ship you over to a nursing home to negate all the other protective measures society has taken to keep infected people from those facilities. Kids can't go to school or play baseball, families can't go out to dinner, couples can't go watch a movie...many working aged people can't earn income at their business/job all in effort to protect the elderly - but this insane policy still is being followed. Unbelieveable.

 

Seriously, during these stay at home orders, why weren't countless other places that sat idle engaged about modifying their use to take in recovering patients instead of this policy? I would think hotels situated near hospitals would be ideal locations for temporary use.

 

What hotel is going to sign up for being the COVID19 infirmary?

 

One that has been essentially empty - take your pick of about 95% of them since mid March. Obviously they wouldn't do it for free, but neither do nursing homes.

 

Frankly I don't care if it's a hotel or a Chili's - ANYTHING but a nursing home. Why not an empty hospital that wasn't taking in elective procedures this whole time, either? People wonder why Florida wasn't hammered nearly as bad as New York was given the similar populations and proportion of those populations being elderly. The policy difference between those states on how they managed Covid infections and Covid hospital discharges to/from nursing homes is a huge reason, IMO.

[homer]

I can see a whole host of reasons why you couldn't use hotels with an elderly population. 95% of the rooms aren't handicap accessible being the major one. Not saying I agree with what they are doing (I assume they have their reasons) but hotels aren't the answer.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I live in MN, and had no idea this was still going on - I believe MN has the worst rate of Covid-related deaths in the country among long term care facility residents compared to its total number of deaths (608 of its 748 deaths are from LTCF residents - over 80%).

 

https://www.startribune.com/minn-nursing-homes-already-site-of-81-of-covid-19-deaths-still-taking-in-infected-patients/570601282/

 

Given all we know about Covid-19 and who the most vulnerable are to dying from it, why is this not the absolute last option on the table for sending recovering covid patients that were hospitalized by now? Especially since the perceived hospital bed shortage concern that initiated the urgency to discharge manageable recovering cases from hospitals as quickly as possible hasn't come close to materializing anywhere outside of NY/NJ?

 

Stay at home, bend the curve, slow the spread, protect the elderly and immuno-compromised at all costs, but if you unfortunately get Covid-19 bad enough to go to a hospital but wind up not needing to be intubated, we'll ship you over to a nursing home to negate all the other protective measures society has taken to keep infected people from those facilities. Kids can't go to school or play baseball, families can't go out to dinner, couples can't go watch a movie...many working aged people can't earn income at their business/job all in effort to protect the elderly - but this insane policy still is being followed. Unbelieveable.

 

Seriously, during these stay at home orders, why weren't countless other places that sat idle engaged about modifying their use to take in recovering patients instead of this policy? I would think hotels situated near hospitals would be ideal locations for temporary use.

 

What hotel is going to sign up for being the COVID19 infirmary?

 

One that has been essentially empty - take your pick of about 95% of them since mid March. Obviously they wouldn't do it for free, but neither do nursing homes.

 

Seems like an exaggeration, but acknowledging that the vacancies are plenty, that's not really something they want to be known for once travel resumes. It's completely irrational from the standpoint of actually getting people sick, but no hotel wants the "We're open for business now, and yes, this is where all the COVID people stayed" stigma.

 

Hotels are pretty used to having open rooms and less busy times anyway. Much more suited to deal with peaks and valleys than something like a restaurant.

[Fear The Chorizo]

I can see a whole host of reasons why you couldn't use hotels with an elderly population. 95% of the rooms aren't handicap accessible being the major one. Not saying I agree with what they are doing (I assume they have their reasons) but hotels aren't the answer.

 

How hard would it be to make a majority of these rooms handicap accessible - particularly 1st floor rooms? IMO that's an less risky set of obstacles to get beyond compared to sending infected people into nursing homes - call me crazy I guess.

 

The whole stigma of "this is where covid patients stayed"...really? So the Javits Center is just going to have to get bulldozed after this now, too? To me that would be a badge of honor after this passes, knowing full well when things would revert back to normal operation that hotel/conference center/whatever would be sanitized and cleaner than anything else around it.

[homer]

You'd have to redo every bathroom. And I believe you'd have to rip out all the carpeting and replace it with tile.

 

Cynical side of me says this is less about hospital beds and more about reimbursement to the provider.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I can see a whole host of reasons why you couldn't use hotels with an elderly population. 95% of the rooms aren't handicap accessible being the major one. Not saying I agree with what they are doing (I assume they have their reasons) but hotels aren't the answer.

 

How hard would it be to make a majority of these rooms handicap accessible - particularly 1st floor rooms? IMO that's an less risky set of obstacles to get beyond compared to sending infected people into nursing homes - call me crazy I guess.

 

The whole stigma of "this is where covid patients stayed"...really? So the Javits Center is just going to have to get bulldozed after this now, too? To me that would be a badge of honor after this passes, knowing full well when things would revert back to normal operation that hotel/conference center/whatever would be sanitized and cleaner than anything else around it.

 

Yes really. It doesn't have to make any sense for it to be a factor. No one wants to walk into that first without knowing the result. If you are a large corp sending 50 reps at a time to a hotel, and Holiday Inn hosted COVID patients 2 weeks ago you will just call Hyatt instead.

 

As for outfitting a bunch of rooms with ADA tubs and the like, all of it takes money and time, and the ADA room have different square footage requirements as well.

[homer]

Georgia is a mess:

 

https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/coronavirus/article242831786.html

 

"Georgia has performed more than 378,000 coronavirus tests since the beginning of the pandemic, and the state health department reported more than 50,000 new tests over the weekend — the highest two-day total since the state’s first cases were confirmed.

 

Nearly 800 tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

 

But some of these tests aren’t meant to find those currently sick, a practice that public health experts say artificially raises Georgia’s testing totals and artificially lowers the state’s percentage of positive tests."

[Fear The Chorizo]

You'd have to redo every bathroom. And I believe you'd have to rip out all the carpeting and replace it with tile.

 

So is this to comply with hotel regulations that make them officially "handicap accessible"? There's no way on earth for nursing staff that would be brought into these facilities to make due with what's available in a pinch - particularly with recovering patients who don't normally require all the handicap accessibility nursing homes have to provide?? If some of these recovering patients in a hospital are handicapped and require 100% of what a nursing home can provide in terms of care and facilities under normal circumstances, why not keep them in the hospital until they are fully recovered?

 

I saw the edit to your post related to this being driven by reimbursement rates to the provider...IMO that is 100% correct, unfortunately

[Fear The Chorizo]

It doesn't have to make any sense for it to be a factor. No one wants to walk into that first without knowing the result. If you are a large corp sending 50 reps at a time to a hotel, and Holiday Inn hosted COVID patients 2 weeks ago you will just call Hyatt instead.

 

Give me one example in this environment where any business is sending 50 people to stay anywhere right now...that's a pretty large strawman. And way more than 2 weeks time would elapse in this sort of hypothetical scenario before a hotel, conference center, anywhere would be allowed to resume operations - and they would rightfully be compensated for that delay. I just think that perception, real as it likely is, shouldn't be a factor when weighing the best option for how to protect the most vulnerable group of people from getting this virus - it's not like everything else done to society hasn't drastically inconvenienced everyone or led to all sorts of other stigmas out there, too.