How about this one?

Wearing a mask while driving alone is like wearing a condom going to bed alone

Are you saying that you understand what his analogy meant?

My best guess is that he's saying the masks don't really do much at this point in the same way you can leave your condoms at home in going to a baby shower because she's already pregnant.

But it omits the fact that he is planning on having sex with many of the non-pregnant women at the shower.

That's why I like my analogy better. Its more to the point and less controversial. But has nothing to do with poker unfortunately

What he is saying is that at this point in the pandemic, everyone has been exposed, so masks are pointless.

The reason why his analogy is hard to understand is because it is really, really, really wrong. You were looking for a credible statement in the anology. There wasn't one

This analogy is differen than the point that Nozsr was making, and it is also wrong. You wear a mask when you are driving because once you put the mask on, you shouldn't touch it. Taking it off and putting it back on every time you get in and out of the car is basically cross contaminating an exposed surface with your face.

So your analogy also fails.

If we keep wearing masks for the foreseeable future until we have a vaccine, we might get more used to seeing them in public social settings.

That way, sitting in a card room around others wearing masks might start to feel less awkward than it would right now? Personally, I feel like one of the deciding factors to go back would be seeing that other people I can relate to are back. And I doubt that will happen before the casino can provide a non-awkward social setting.

you mean that thing that happened with AIDS? It's always been fine for undesirables to die in America

Just when you think there couldn’t be a more poorly thought out analogy than some we’ve seen in these threads...

Hey everyone, diseases already exist, so there's no point in washing your hands. Stable doors and bolted horses.

What do you bolt your horses to?

The doors don’t even need to be that stable if the horses are bolted down.

Wearing masks in public is normal in many parts of the world. It wouldn't be a bad thing if that becomes normalized in the US as well.

I agree but it'll never happen due to all of the "but muh freedomz" folk.

It's silly that they had to politard up something as innocuous as wearing a face mask to protect lives during a deadly pandemic.

They'll die off eventually


--klez

mod: as a reminder, we're allowing some arguments about CV and its impacts on poker here in this thread. While that may sometimes veer into a political direction or otherwise run afoul of our rules here, as long as it is live poker related CV discussion, we're giving it a slightly wider latitude here for the time being.

But that does not mean you have an open license to argue about politics or discuss politically charged current events of any sort here. This is not the politics or economics forum. Please find somewhere else to argue about that stuff.

My friend is hosting a free webinar on the operational aspects of casino reopening at noon today (Thursday).

Basically, it is a panel of industry insiders who either own/operate casinos or run various parts of operations. They will be talking about how they planned for reopening, what kinds of changes they have had to make to accomodate health and safety, and how their reopenings are going.

If you are a poker room manager/floor/shift manager/other suit, it might be beneficial for you to listen in on this so you can present some ideas for your property poker room's reopening.

Additionally, if you are in one of the above roles, but are currently furloughed, you might still benefit from listening in on it to show how you are still investing time in your professional development.

https://www.ecornell.com/keynotes/overview/K061820a/

Operational Control of Casinos
Reopening In the Age of Coronavirus
Thursday, June 18, 2020, 12pm EDT

Event Overview
With many casinos already reopened and an increasing number of gaming establishments plotting their path toward reopening in the coming weeks, strong operational policies and procedures will be of paramount importance. This webinar will focus on various aspects of casino operations and how management intends to ensure proper operational control.

Our panelists will discuss their concerns and plans for maintaining the health and safety of casino employees and patrons on the gaming floor. Panelists will also address the ways in which they are leveraging technology to support these plans. In addition, we will discuss how reopening efforts have proceeded in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
What You'll Learn

How seasoned professionals have planned for casino reopening efforts
Specific operational strategies for maintaining worker and player safety across the full range of gaming operations
What types of technology can be leveraged to support casino reopening efforts
Potential operational stress points in the reopening process and best practices for maintaining operational excellence during reopening periods
How reopened casinos are doing from an operational standpoint

https://public.flouri******udio/visu...F8By8BBnjksbXQ

David Stockman talks at length about "Texas"... skip the politard stuff in the link below until you get down to the part about the facts of the situation in Texas...

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/...range-man-bad/

So, a few things to note. His first argument is that NYC, the most densly populated city in the US, has more per capita COVID cases, by almost an order of magnitude. That is a great refutation of an argument that no one is making. What we are more concerned about is trends, the direction of the curves. Let me throw up two graphs for you. The first is the new cases for Texas, the second is the new cases for New York






The second point he makes is that ICU utilization is only at 73% capacity, and that COVID-19 patients are not the majority of these cases. First, 70% is threshold level of concern. Given fluctuation of admittance, if you are living above 70%, you are in a position where a bad week could become problematic. His argument is that it has been high before. This does not reduce the threat or risk.

His second argument is that only a fraction of those patients are COVID patients. This doesn't matter. Other patients count too. Other paitents use critical care beds too. Other patients will die without those beds too.

If we look at the uptick in new cases and assume a fraction of them will need critical care beds, and we are currently at 72% (note, that stat was for acute, not critical, care beds. The stats for critical care beds in Harris county are somewhat hazy right now), then the system is headed for an overload.

He has an agenda. He presents stats and interprets them to fit his narrative.

This from from Spewing's post #262...

"...The second point he makes is that ICU utilization is only at 73% capacity, and that COVID-19 patients are not the majority of these cases. First, 70% is threshold level of concern. Given fluctuation of admittance, if you are living above 70%, you are in a position where a bad week could become problematic. His argument is that it has been high before. This does not reduce the threat or risk. .."

Apparently you chose to ignore the statements from the Texas hospitals (which comprised most of the article!) themselves, and you trot out a "70%" thresh-hold that the article decimates. Forgive the skeptical among us who would put more credibility in the hospital people themselves. For those who are actually willing to read what the Texas hospitals themselves say, here it is. For those who are not, for whatever reason, these facts are not for you. {Snide comments within brackets like this are not part of the original article, as you might conclude on your own}...

"... So here are the statewide facts: As of June 25, Texas had 54,700 staffed acute care hospital beds, but only 41,950 were being used, implying a occupancy rate of just 76.7% and 12,750 empty beds still available.
Moreover, only about 5,000 beds representing 12% of the current census were occupied by confirmed or suspected Covid patients. So as of June 25 the state had nearly 2.5X more empty hospital beds than it had Covid patients, notwithstanding the surge of new cases and hospitalizations during the month of June.
In fact, that’s not the half of it. Owing to seasonal factors, the number of empty hospital beds has actually been rising during the spring months even in the face of the soaring Covid caseload.
That’s right. On March 18, Texas had 46,550 occupied hospital beds, reflecting an occupancy rate of 85% or well above the 76.7% level as of June 25.
But back in March virtually none of these occupied beds were attributable to Covid patients. That’s because at that point there had been only be 83 confirmed Covid cases and 2 deaths reported for the entire state!
By then what happened over the next three months, as the Covid caseload built up from zero to the present 5,000, is that even more beds emptied out due to:

state orders prohibiting elective surgeries and other treatments;
normal seasonal declines in occupancy; and
aggressive reclassification of patients admitted for other reasons as Covid patients.

As to the latter point, it seems that Texas health officials started logging every single COVID-19-positive patient in the state as a COVID-19 hospitalization, even if the patients themselves were admitted seeking treatment for something other than the coronavirus. {you don't think they get paid extra for these patients, do you?}
As Lindsey Rosales, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Health Services, confirmed recently to an independent investigator:
“The number of hospitalized patients includes patients with a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19 even if the person is admitted to the hospital for a different reason,” Rosales said.
Moreover, nearly everyone admitted for some other medical condition – and presumably asymptomatic for Covid – gets tested for Covid-19 before other treatments or surgeries are permitted:
Texas Health Resources, one of the state’s largest hospital systems, says on its website that its “patients [are] tested before most procedures.” Elective surgeries and other medical procedures in Texas have gone up in recent weeks as the state has gradually re-opened following its lockdown.
In other words, the first wave of Lockdowns created a huge backlog of demand for elective surgeries and other discretionary treatments, which were banned by state authorities. But once those bans were lifted and people got in the hospital for deferred treatments, they were tested for Covid and became the statistical gruel for the so-called second wave.
But even then, the Texas hospital statistics over the last three months make mincemeat out of the national media’s weekend narrative that Texas hospitals will soon be overflowing into the hallways. To wit, here is the trend of unused acute care beds in the Texas hospital system:

3/18: 8,155;
4/1: 18,411;
4/15: 21,489;
4/29: 19,432;
5/20: 16,035;
5/27: 15,315;
6/3: 15,219;
6/10: 13,271;
6/17: 14,993;
6/25: 12,571

In short, Texas had gone from virtually no Covid cases or deaths on March 18 to 131,917 cases and 2,296 deaths by June 25, but it actually had 56% more empty hospital beds on the latter date!
You can’t make this stuff up. The MSM is so intoxicated by Orange Man Bad that it has essentially turned journalism into a kangaroo court of juvenile imprecations.
Nor are we attempting to deceptively drown the case in statewide averages. As of last week, the Houston area alone had 12,458 staffed acute care beds (23% of the statewide total), but 2,675 or 21% of these were empty; and on top of that they had an additional surge capacity of another 925 beds.
That’s especially salient because the rise in cases in Texas and Houston has generally been among a much younger population than earlier in the pandemic, and the need has been for exactly these kinds of general beds, not ICU beds.
So the fact is, as of last week the Houston area hospitals had just 795 lab confirmed Covid patients, representing just 8% of their 9,785 daily census. That also means that given Houston’s 3,600 beds of remaining surge capacity, they could actually accommodate a 4X increase in their current Covid caseload.
As it happened, even the leadership of the Houston health care community finally had enough from CNN, NBC, and the rest of the Covid Calamity Howlers, and struck back this weekend with a resounding denial of this spurious crisis narrative.
For instance, the CEO of one Houston’s leading hospitals, Memorial Hermann, pulled no punches:
We actually still think we have plenty of capacity to meet the demand for Covid, as well as non-Covid patients. We’re always busy in the summertime, and what we’re seeing now is a typical summer for us.
Callender, whose not-for-profit health system has 17 hospitals in the Houston area, stressed that the medical network’s capacity is “constantly in flux” and needing to be managed. “But right now, we’re able to do that very well,” he said.
“Across our system, we have about 4,000 beds that we can bring into play” for intensive care, he said. “Right now, only about 30% are being utilized for Covid care, so we still have plenty of capacity for Covid patients as well as patients who need hospitalization for other illnesses.”
Doctors and nurses also have learned how to better treat Covid-19 patients after three months of its presence, said Callender, who joined Memorial Hermann in 2019.
“We’re seeing a slightly lower rate in terms of the number of typical hospital bed patients who convert to a need for ICU hospitalization. We’re also using ventilators less frequently,” he said. “We have more drugs at our disposable that we know help limit the severity and duration of the illness. So overall we’re faring better than we did just a couple months ago.”
Likewise, chimed in Dr. Marc Boom, President and CEO of another leading institution, Houston Methodist:
The number of hospitalizations are “being misinterpreted,” said Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom, “and, quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.”
“We do have the capacity to care for many more patients, and have lots of fluidity and ability to manage,” Boom said.
Boom pointed out that his hospital one year ago was also at 95% ICU capacity – long before Covid was a thing!
That’s right. Apparently, 95% utilization of the ICU is a typical June condition, not the sign of the Covid Apocalypse. And contrary to the heated headlines on the MSM, only about 25% of Houston’s fully occupied ICU’s are accounted for by Covid patients.
Again from Boom:
It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s and 90s,” he said. “That’s how all hospitals operate.”
…..the hospital “[has] many levers in our ability to adjust our ICU,” he said, claiming that the hospital capacity regularly reported by the media is “base” capacity rather than surge capacity.
Boom also alluded to hospitals’ ability to turn regular beds into ICU beds as well as to turn recovery, and pre- and post surgical areas into ICU areas if needed as a kind of coronavirus “flex area.”
Specifically, there are about 2,200 ICU beds in the Houston service area, but another 500 beds could be added to this after such planned for conversions and re-purposings. And Boom also pointed out an even more salient point:
Boom said overall, hospitals are seeing younger COVID-19 patients, who stay for a shorter period of time, and fewer deaths. Houston Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom told CNBC on Monday that the demographics of the outbreak have “flipped” and that the mostly-younger people arriving in the state’s hospitals often don’t require ICU beds, even though many do get very sick.
Finally, there was this rebuke to the smirking CNN anchor, who on Saturday had been bemoaning that the situation was allegedly so desperate that a Houston children’s hospital had been drafted into Covid service at great risk to the children.
Not at all, according to Mark Wallace, Texas Children’s Hospital president and CEO. Actually, this was just part of the systems’ surge plan:
Texas Children’s started accepting adult COVID-19 positive patients this week and is currently operating at a 74 percent ICU occupancy, Wallace said.
“We have the ability to take care of all of the Houstonians that need a critical care environment, that need to be operated on, or acute care,” Wallace said.

Let me see if I can break down your wall of angry text into a few points.

Point 1 is that you are saying that hospitals have seasonal load irrespective of COVID-19. Yes, I concede that. I also state that this is irrelevant. Unless you are arguing that COVID does not result in an increase in hospitilizations and critical care usage, which would be difficult to argue, I do not see the relevance in stating that hospitals have been above peak before.

This is like arguing that just because we have had heavy rain before, we shouldn't be worried when we see a wave of tropical storms heading our way, and the ground is already soaked.

Point 2 is that hospitals themselves are saying that there is no problem. The article you referenced cherry picks a few quotes. I will refer you to a statement released by representatives of several Harris county hospital systems



I would like to focus on the phrase "As COVID-19 hospitilizations continue to increase at an alarming rate, however, ICU capacity is becoming increasingly stretched. If this trend continues,our hospital system capacity will become overwhelmed, leading us to make difficult choices of delaying much-needed non-COVID care to accomodate a greater number of COVID patients".

Earlier (I believe about a week ago), TMC was saying they were at 100% ICU utilization. Then they came back and said they had additional beds (I believe these are the stats you are quoting). What is not mentioned is that these are not ICU beds. They do not have the same hookups, telemetry, or physical layout of ICU rooms, nor are they staffed by critical care nurses or intensivists. And, as the release mentions, using them could compromise care for non-COVID patients. This is not the 'Everything is fine' message that people want to think it is, rather, it is a 'We have a fall back position, but it is going to hurt'.

Third, with regards to how COVID patients are counted-who cares? I am concerned about trends, not raw numbers. Patients have always been counted this way. I don't really care about what percentage of a hospitals admits are COVID patients. What I care about is this-if we are already at near capacity for critical care beds (you seem to be focusing on acute care beds, these are not really the ones I am worried about), is there a trend occurring that would imply that demand for these beds is steadily increasing and shows no signs of abating. I can't look at the numbers and see any answer besides 'Yes, hospital system utilization will steadily increase over the next few weeks, and we see no sign of it abating'.

Beds are only one part of the constrained resources. Vents (so far no shortage, thank goodness), meds (Remdesivir is running low in some facilities), intesivists, and critical care nurses will also become issues as utilization in Harris county (followed by Dallas, than Tarrant, then Bexar, and then Travis) picks.

I am just not buying the idea that the severity of the COVID crisis in Texas is just a media fabrication. Living smack in the middle of Dallas, I wish it were.

Texas COVID is not at apocalypse levels but Houston is quickly approaching crisis levels and the Dallas metro area is not far behind. We won’t be seeing people dying on the sidewalk but we could see triage with some rationing or deferral of non urgent care.