re: Just curious, has there been any kind of spike in Tuscaloosa since the celebration?

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How many of those deaths are actually related to Covid??? Because covid has been around for years!!! Read an old old lysol spray can. I had it, never went to the doctor and my own immune system took care of it... So of those #'s, how many ACTUALLY died of Covid? How many of those people died of something else and then it was attributed to Covid??? And remember those pics from China showing people dropping like flies and us seeing pics/vids of overrun hospitals from covid cases? How many of these situations have you actually seen?? Matter of fact, let's ask the entire board... Remember when this thing first came up and we worked worked into a frightener frenzie,how many of you all witnessed the shite they were showing us in tv??

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Sorry, but you've been reading a few too many conspiracy websites.

Here's the real situation as I've observed it from (1) working on an ambulance from the time it first hit our shores until right now as I type this from the fire station and (2) doing quite a few hospital ER rotations in November/December as part of a class I was taking .

First, the Lysol thing. Coronaviruses have been around for a very long time. There have been animal vaccines for some flavors of it for a very long time. THIS VERSION is new. Thanks to those that have been around a long time, there was a pretty good body of work that helped get a vaccine up and running pretty quickly.

You had it and your own immune system took care of it. That's great. It's also not the case for everyone. I got really sick and nearly got hospitalized. My wife had a slight cough. Lots of people have died from COVID related illnesses where the trigger was the infection. It's like bleeding out from a gunshot wound. If you had not been shot, you wouldn't have bled out so the cause of death is listed as GSW. Same thing for those people that go into cardiac arrest because COVID has driven their SpO2 levels below 80%. Are some deaths credited to COVID that weren't COVID? Absolutely. Have some deaths that were triggered by COVID been credited to something else? Absolutely. The number differences aren't going to be statistically significant.

Now, to what we saw on TV. When you saw it, the situation was nowhere near that bad here and for most of the time it wasn't bad at all. Now you aren't seeing it on TV, but guess what - it got that bad here very recently. We protect a population of about 7,000 and we ran four in home COVID deaths the last 10 days of December and another call where the guy had been hospitalized with it, came home, got worse again, and proceeded to go outside and eat a pistol after telling family he couldn't stand to go back to the hospital. For a period of about two months (mid November to early January) about half of all our calls were COVID. We sat in a parking lot in Montgomery calling hospitals only to be told every one in Montgomery and Elmore counties was on diversion. We held in the hall of an ER with the patient on our cot for over an hour more than once because there was no bed available - once for almost 2 hours. We were lucky on that one. Trucks that arrived after us were told to hold with their patient in the truck because the ER hall was full. People couldn't get transferred from small community hospitals to more specialized facilities because there was no room. We had an in-field resuscitation of a cardiac arrest that had to go from a facility just north of Montgomery to Atlanta because they couldn't find a hospital in Alabama that was able to take him.

So, who saw that shite? I did very recently. It's been better the last couple of weeks but don't sit there and say it didn't happen because it sure as shite did.

Now, as you've read all this if you look back at the threads you'll see I've been a "don't shut it down" guy from the start. I still am. Florida is wide open, California has been locked down. The per-capita infection rate is virtually identical for both places.

Reactions, responses, and how the story gets told are completely political but the disease itself is quite real.

DRUNK UA STUDENT RANT WARNING: I’ve already had it. Everyone I know here has had it or had “significant exposure” with no test(they definitely caught it.) At this point I’m approaching supposedly the end of my immunity and just assuming I’ll get it again. Surprisingly, I don’t interact with many old people while attending college 200 miles from my home. Also I’d like to get my money’s worth by attending classes on campus instead of going in once a week and having lectures on zoom every two weeks. I’d also like to be able to go to basketball games when our team is fricking #9 in the nation. I got screwed out of one of my 2 Iron Bowls here at UA because we all want to pretend students weren’t all packed in together watching the games in droves right up on each other. I’m getting to the point where if I see a kid on campus wearing a mask outside, I want to punch him. It’s not even about the efficacy of a mask, if someone is wearing it way away from anyone outside, it’s just supporting us getting fricked in the arse. And everyone of them has been around over 10 people in apartments partying, I guarantee it. Some of my friends want more restrictions on campus and will openly say it while at a party with 30 people. Im done with the nonsense. Yes, this disease is bad, but if you’re old, stay home. The absence of a spike after this shows that the young people aren’t primary spreaders or at major risk. My college experience is being ruined by “Wear mask when you enter restaurant, take it off when you get to tables right next to people” logic.

ETA: I got back to Mobile and about a 1/3rd of my favorite restaurants had closed In the span between May-August. I’m sure there we’re employees willing to work, and customers willing to dine inside, but frick personal choice. We have to placate the people that aren’t even leaving their homes anyways or are, and just hypocritically make political points in crowded places.

(Apologize for the “political” nature of this post but I never mentioned any parties, just my own experience and frustrations.)

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I’ve already had it. Everyone I know here has had it or had “significant exposure” with no test(they definitely caught it.

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I have 2 kids there right now, a freshman and a junior, and they feel the same way you do and when I spoke with them about they were even drunk!

I am so sorry all you kids are going thru this, this time in your lives is supposed to be the BEST! I know my years in Tuscaloosa were awesome and I wouldn't change them for anything in this world.