This is not strictly Covid related, more medical access related, which is tangential to the covid mess. Nonetheless, here it is for anyone who finds such things interesting:
They cover two large issues we have with Medicaid, reimbursement below overhead costs and amazingly byzantine billing procedures, but leave out the most egregious (IMHO) barrier. Medicaid employs inspectors who seem to be hell-bent on finding something to complain about. One told us that we were in violation because the nurses would open the fridge and remove multiple vaccine vials at once, for the same patient, mind you. He insisted that proper procedure is to open the door, remove one vial, close the door then open it again to remove the second, close and open again for #3. We have at times 4 or 5 vaccines for a single visit! We had to duplicate our refrigerators and freezers, because we cannot have private and Medicaid in the same unit. It goes on. I put up with it because the kids need care, but when we were in independent practice, we did not take Medicaid because we literally could not afford to. Currently, we are the only practice seeing pediatric patients that takes Medicaid in our area. It’s a huge disservice to our patient population.
He is also against the COVID-19 vaccines, claiming that they will actually kill 70% of the world’s population. The Christian conservative pastor said that massive death will be a “good thing” because “stupid people” will die. The Christian conservative pastor said that massive death will be a “good thing” because “stupid people” will die.
I mentioned on another thread that our CEO refused to get vaccinated. He constantly tells people that he came back from China with Covid in November 2020. While it’s true he did go to Wuhan, when he returned we had meetings in his small office while he was sick and not one of us got sick.
Well, he got sick last week (again ), tested positive for Covid-19 and is out for two weeks.
Is it? Serious question; if nothing else, the recent activity (including the Science letter) have raised doubts about whether such a consensus still exists.
Lots of people died in this pandemic through literally no fault of their own. It hit communities of color and the working poor the hardest… I don’t think they are “stupid” and they certainly didn’t deserve to die.
Yeah, that is why I said “exactly”. It isn’t only the stupid people who will die and not all covid denialists will die of covid. There will be people who die of covid because they’ve been stupid about their approach to covid. That is the sense in which that sentence is true.
The part about “massive deaths will be a good thing” is wrong on every level. That people would look to someone who says such things for moral guidance is abomination.
so far no studies related to likely intermediate hosts in the fur industry, unlike in SARS
MERS was easier, also because it was re-occuring infections, and not fully adapted to human hosts (infection chains broke after a couple of infections)
in SARS, the original source of the pandemic wasn’t found (AFAIR), but testing showed very likely ways the pandemic developed. Finding the actual source pool of the zoonosis intermediates is really hard, since the populations are most likely no longer alive. Killed in the industry due to usual process, or killed due to hygiene measures during the pandemic. (cf. minks during this pandemic in several countries).
OK, let’s try again. “Consensus” usually suggests widespread agreement among experts in the field. Last year I might have pointed to the Lancet and Nature Letters op-eds as evidence of consensus. As the part of my post you omitted points out, those don’t work anymore. So, if there is a consensus, where has it(*) been documented? Any recent statements from the big professional virology associations?
It seems to me that we’re back to the basic exploratory/we don’t know shit stage.
(*)“It” meaning the consensus, not one or another hypothesis.
My understanding is that even the scientists who are saying that the lab leak scenario is plausible and needs to be examined are generally not going so far as to say that this scenario is more likely than the zoonotic origin scenario.
Yes, but the original statement was: “It’s true that the majority of scientists currently believe the zoonotic origin to be the more likely scenario.”
I believe that it is still true that a majority of scientists would agree that the zoonotic origin scenario is more likely, even among scientists who are now saying that the lab leak scenario cannot be dismissed outright.
ETA: I am not an expert, but I believe that the term zoonosis precludes cases in which a disease was isolated from an animal for study. I could be wrong about that.
), tested positive for Covid-19 and is out for two weeks.
