Corona Virus Effect On Theatres In The USA

[Marcel Birgelen]

I would lean towards giving your idea a shot IF the end result would be eradicating the virus over the course of a few months. That is just an impossibility at this point because it would require a full quarantine that is not possible to implement.

Everybody knows a zero-risk society cannot function in any way it would still resemble a society we want to live in. We take "calculated" risks each and every day, that's obvious. That's also why we don't shut-down society for the flu. But the flu is a relatively calculated risk. Most of us have some kind of resistance against it and it follows roughly the same pattern every year. We're dealing with something people don't have any pre-existing resistance for and something that is highly contagious. All risk models we have, are based on a few months worth of data, which seems to be partly unreliable (yes, China, I'm looking at you). So, welcome in this global viral and social experiment...

The problem I have with the current approaches is that they are all way to weak for the problems at hand. It's obviously easy to shout from the sidelines, but it's just startling to see how we're essentially stuck with a bunch of dreadful amateurs leading the show. That's especially true in the U.S., where the people leading the show are almost criminally ignorant of the reality at hand on ALL levels, but it's also true to what's happening over in Europe, where a lack of unity and a web of self-interests blocks anything really constructive from happening.

In my opinion, if you, as a government, whether it is the central government, state or local government, shut down the entire economy, you're obliged to come up with a plan of how to make sure the people you just robbed of their rights of making a living will be able to survive this government mandated shutdown. The situation may be more dire in one country than the other, but I know not ONE country that put forward the means to ensure this. Now, there are many countries in the world that simply can't do that. But the U.S. and the E.U. as a whole, they COULD do it. They could put forward a GLOBAL "New Marshall Plan" and make sure China and India commit to it. Heck, they will probably gladly join, for all the shit China is getting (some of it deservedly so), their economy is hit equally hard.

On the other hand, after ignoring all the early warnings, the only way that was left to contain this virus was to pull the big red lever, as it was clear, it was getting out of hand. Now, restarting stuff is a bit like restarting a big power grid once it has failed. It's clear we can't just reverse the lever and go full-steam ahead. It's also clear we can't wait months to come up with a restart plan, by then, all the ice cream has melted and the milk in the fridge has gone sour, so to say... But what you see there is the same lack of leadership all around the globe. Without a few exceptions, there are no governments that REALLY have the means in place to restart the economy. It's all just a big experiment, as nobody really knows what's going to happen and that's all due to lack of testing. And that's where my primary concern is.

I agree with Steve that testing is essential to restart the whole thing. How can you isolate new pockets when you don't even know where they are? So, most of the restart plans I've seen are nothing but experiments. We're starting the engines of the big tanker, but we're sailing blind, only when the floor starts rumbling under our feet, we'll probably pull that big red lever again... The last few months could've been used to ramp-up testing. Why not force big-pharma to open up the tests they have? Why not use the emergency powers to force production of those tests and testing gear? I'm getting angry when I hear that one of the reasons for lack of testing in e.g. the Netherlands was, because someone decided that Roche should be the sole supplier of testing gear. Now, there are apparently more or less sufficient testing machines, but the test kits, which were essentially nothing more than plastic tubes with a piece of cotton in it, were on short supply. Roche couldn't handle the demand, so doctors had to come up with their own improvised test tubes, but it obviously wasn't enough, also, they had better things to do... Any competent leader would've put the middle finger towards Roche and would've tasked a bunch of local plastic manufacturers to produce those tubes en-masse, but apparently they were afraid of getting sued...

[Lyle Romer]

The governor down in Florida has been trying to block the release of numbers of hospitalizations and deaths out of fear it will make him and the President look bad.

I don't have time for a long response right now but I had to respond to this statement. What on earth are you talking about? Florida has been one of the most open, if not the most open, when it comes to data availability. They have an interactive dashboard where you can see all data by county and a lot of data by zip code. The data includes cases, hospitalizations, deaths, testing and sentinel health metrics. The state also releases a daily report for the state and another report by county in PDF form. The statewide report has every single case listed on a separate line with pertinent details. The report by county shows very detailed data including the monitoring metrics since before the outbreak began.

The detailed PDFs are available here https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/ and the interactive dashboard is https://experience.arcgis.com/experi...8ddedb9b25e429.

I don't know what source you get your news from but if what Florida is doing is the governor trying to block the release of data then I don't know what is considered being open. Would they have to release the patient names and what hospital and room they are in?

Perhaps your news source has spun the fact that Florida doesn't count deaths of non-residents (which is a tiny number based on the cases which they do count and detail) in the total into some kind of attempt to block the release of data.

[Mike Blakesley]

The government should have also ensured that when they prevented people from being able to earn a living that they were held harmless on financial obligations and I don't mean that they were running up a tab with their landlord and the like...that money is gone...it would have to ripple all of the way through too if landlords aren't receiving rent/mortgages, they can't pay...etc.

Well, it's the "etc." that is the sticking point. It amazes me that there are otherwise-smart people who think "the money is gone" is acceptable for everyone they decide it should be. Unless your apartment complex, rental business property, etc. is owned by a self-contained billionaire, there are people up the ladder who have bills they have to pay. But nobody ever seems to have a solution for that, except printing more government money, which is unsustainable.

So it's just another one of those things where there's no solution. When is some brave politician going to stand up and tell the truth: Sorry folks, there IS NO solution. We're just going to have to ride this mother out until we get a vaccine, and best of luck to you all.

I'm in an area where the whole "false sense of security" is running in high gear. Most people aren't wearing masks. I'm going to work every day at the parts store like I always did (we're an essential business). There are no cases in our county, nor are there any in most of the counties around us. The nearest county with cases is 100 miles away, and they only have eight active cases right now. In our whole state, which is the fourth largest state in the country by area, there are only 37 active cases right now, and only 6 people statewide in the hospital. The vast majority of the 37 active cases are hundreds of miles away from us, yet we are still in a partial ("phase 1") shutdown mode. Over the past couple we've usually had either zero, one, or two new cases per day. We keep hearing from the doom-and-gloomers that the virus is going to be around for another year, 18 months, two years, or forever, depending which nay-sayer you tune into. Here, anybody with symptoms can get tested. The restaurants and bars are opening tomorrow, but the movie theaters are not, which seems backwards to me..... we can social-distance people much easier than bars and restaurants can, and our crowds aren't socializing with each other while they're with us..... they're all sitting, facing the same direction, and for the most part, not talking. But we're still closed.

Two weeks ago we lost my mom, and her funeral was last Thursday. We had to restrict the service to family only and we couldn't hug each other, although a few of us cheated on occasion. Nobody is sick yet to my knowledge.

In opening things up, those in power are just determined to take every last bit of enjoyment out of everything. They're talking about opening Disney World, but the characters are going to be wearing masks, keeping all the people in line 6 feet apart, etc etc etc. Which ruins Disney World. Welcome to the new reality. And everyone is talking about how we'll probably have another virus next year and the year after that, so we're going to shut down for weeks or months every time it happens? I'm beginning to see why the suicide rate is climbing. Who wants to live in this world? Maybe we should just give it to the bugs and get on to the next life.

[Bobby Henderson]

Bobby, your argument fails in a couple of levels. For someone to infect you, they'd have to have the virus, something nobody can say since, you know, the testing has been so delinquent. Constitutionally, the concept of "prior-restraint" has been deemed unconstitutional so you don't get to stop someone from doing something on the mere presumption that they will break the law. Remember too, the virus can only spread if one picks it up and then delivers it to another. The only way grandma gets it is if you bring it to her.

I think my argument still works on a key point. It's now proven SARS-CoV-2 can be spread by people with no obvious symptoms, regardless if they develop the full blown COVID-19 disease or recover, never knowing for sure they were ever sick. Everybody know this. Some are choosing to ignore the fact however.

People are making jokes about Schrödinger's cat in relation to this virus. You can't really know 100% for sure if you're actively infected, previously infected or haven't been infected until getting a test. The joke is we're both infected and not infected at the same time. So the considerate thing to do is act as if you might be carrying the virus. Hence the directives about face masks coming from city officials.

Does society's mere fear of the virus give them the "right" to inflect financial ruin? Depending on where you are in life, this may not ever be recoverable. Business are already permanently lost. In the non-universal healthcare society we are in, those that have lost their jobs have, for the most part, lost their medical insurance too.

This is not a binary equation in terms of one policy being bad for the economy and the other being good. There too is a serious risk of severe economic damage with opening up everything, letting everyone "go back to normal" and letting the virus run its "natural course."

There is economic consequence to large numbers of people having their lives cut short. Businesses suffer talent loss. Vacant real estate floods the market. There is a long term economic consequence for even larger numbers of people having to spend days or weeks in the hospital. Survivors of hospitalization may be saddled with breathtakingly large medical bills. And thanks to recent changes in laws they probably won't be able to escape those bills via bankruptcy. A large enough death toll would scare people away from businesses and public spaces. Consumer spending drives 70% of the economy; consumers wouldn't be doing much spending if their confidence about leaving the house was totally shot.

Some essential businesses are being forced to close anyway, even despite Presidential orders to remain open. Meat processing plants across the country have been turning into SARS-CoV-2 hot spots. How are they supposed to stay operational if much of the work force ends up infected? This problem has created a severe crisis for ranchers. They're having to kill all kinds of livestock in huge numbers. They can't afford to keep feeding them. If they can sell the cattle, pigs, etc they're being forced to sell them for far under their normal value. Thanks to the lack of PPE and meat producers down-playing the situation and not taking proper precautions we could be in for one hell of a meat shortage.

I don't have time for a long response right now but I had to respond to this statement. What on earth are you talking about? Florida has been one of the most open, if not the most open, when it comes to data availability.

This past week medical examiners in Florida were publicly releasing numbers of COVID-19 deaths. Their numbers collectively were 10 percent higher than what the state was reporting. So the state made the medical examiners stop giving their own public reports.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health...ade-them-stop/

Similar story in Miami in the middle of April:
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/cor...242050696.html

I'm in an area where the whole "false sense of security" is running in high gear. Most people aren't wearing masks. I'm going to work every day at the parts store like I always did (we're an essential business).

We've definitely been afflicted with the false sense of security thing here. But now I fear it's finally catching up with us and about to bite us in the ass. Over this past weekend Comanche County has seen its biggest increases yet in confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases. And not far away in another small town there has been yet another outbreak in a nursing home, this time in Frederick. 13 cases.

[Lyle Romer]

This past week medical examiners in Florida were publicly releasing numbers of COVID-19 deaths. Their numbers collectively were 10 percent higher than what the state was reporting. So the state made the medical examiners stop giving their own public reports.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health...ade-them-stop/

Similar story in Miami in the middle of April:
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/cor...242050696.html

These stories are a perfect example of how a journalist can take some facts and some quotes and present it in a way that makes it seem there is some kind of nefarious conspiracy. The "numbers" from the medical examiners were 10% higher when looking at daily new death counts. This was explained by the Governor in a press conference last week when he was asked about it. The state puts the deaths into the data on the day the death occurred, not the date that the autopsy report was released. The MEs were reporting "new" deaths on the day they released the report.

The fact that Palm Beach county stopped the release indicates that there may be a legitimate privacy concern. Palm Beach county is predominantly Democrat and wouldn't be doing anything to help the Governor look better.

Even if what the report was insinuating was true, how does understating deaths by 10% do anything to make the Governor or the President "look better?"

[Bobby Henderson]

These stories are a perfect example of how a journalist can take some facts and some quotes and present it in a way that makes it seem there is some kind of nefarious conspiracy.

This is not "a" journalist. There are multiple examples and many news sources corroborating the same problem.

The "numbers" from the medical examiners were 10% higher when looking at daily new death counts. This was explained by the Governor in a press conference last week when he was asked about it. The state puts the deaths into the data on the day the death occurred, not the date that the autopsy report was released. The MEs were reporting "new" deaths on the day they released the report.

The State was delaying the release of info from the ME's up to 9 days by confining the ME data to their cumulative state reports. That's a long time to sandbag case information during a pandemic.

The fact that Palm Beach county stopped the release indicates that there may be a legitimate privacy concern.

There were no privacy concerns because none of the reports from the Medical Examiners were giving out any names or other personal information.

Even if what the report was insinuating was true, how does understating deaths by 10% do anything to make the Governor or the President "look better?"

To quote the President when he wanted to keep the cruise ship passengers on the boat, "I like the numbers where they are." Rising case numbers are not flattering to the people in charge. The news media is not the only crowd who likes spinning the truth. Politicians are notorious for it. From the President on down, there has already been a very solid pattern of behavior clearly demonstrated at downplaying this crisis at any opportunity.

[Mark Lane]

I may or may not wear a mask. We can not be required to wear on under the American Disabilities Act and the store can not ask me what kind of medical condition I might have that prevents me from wearing one. I see people in most stores half or less are wearing a mask.

In Michigan, a Family Dollar security guard was shot and killed over a dispute over wearing a mask. That is sick. The guard is just doing his job. The store might be violating the ADA laws but that is something to be taken up later with the headquarters not with a line level employee. It is heartbreaking how some people react to this.. If I don't wish to wear a mask, I just take my business to another store... or put the darn mask on.

We will be filing a Letter of Intent so we can sue the state under the Taking Clause of the 5th Amendment. The state has the right to shut us down of the good of the people but we have to be fairly compensated for our business. It is as if there is a huge fire in your city. The city needs to take your building and build a firewall to save the city. The government can do that, but they have to compensate you for your business and building. What our state did was take over our business, shut it down to create a fire wall against the virus and now doesn't show any interest in compensating us for it. The letter gives us to right to come back and address this issue at a latter date and file a suit if needed, it just reserves the right to take legal action at a latter date. I don't know if there is any chance of winning a suit or not since these are uncharted waters... but I like to be able to keep that option open.

[Mark Lane]

Bobby Henderson "As to what numbers the state of Michigan is releasing in hospitalizations how do you know the numbers they're releasing are false (and presumably politically tainted)? The governor down in Florida has been trying to block the release of numbers of hospitalizations and deaths out of fear it will make him and the President look bad. Thanks to the overall lack of testing nationwide the numbers of those actually infected by SARS-CoV-2 and killed by COVID-19 illness are probably significantly higher."

We are a resort town but the town near us is where the medial offices are including the hospital. What our customers are telling us is that medical personal are being laid off, that the hospitals are not busy. They tell us what the official word in not what they are experiencing and they have reached out to other people in other parts of the country who are experiencing the same thing. I have not seen this myself, I try and stay out of the hospitals.
The governor has ceased the Freedom of Information Act or at least postponed it, All the hospital numbers are reported directly to her office so we don't know if the numbers are true or not but a recent snap shot released from the state shows there might be something to the claims the numbers are wrong. There has been a huge decrease in deaths from Cancer, Heart Attacks and many other illnesses. The claims from those in the field are anything and everything possible is being called an illness or death cased by the coronavirus. I don't know if this is true but when the state will not release the raw numbers, it makes people less trusting.
The theory is the hospitals get more money from treating people with coronavirus.. I don't know if that is true or not.

[James Wyrembelski]

. There has been a huge decrease in deaths from Cancer, Heart Attacks and many other illnesses. The claims from those in the field are anything and everything possible is being called an illness or death cased by the coronavirus. .

Ive been seeing this as well, and it's concerning.

[Lyle Romer]

This is not "a" journalist. There are multiple examples and many news sources corroborating the same problem.



The State was delaying the release of info from the ME's up to 9 days by confining the ME data to their cumulative state reports. That's a long time to sandbag case information during a pandemic.



There were no privacy concerns because none of the reports from the Medical Examiners were giving out any names or other personal information.



To quote the President when he wanted to keep the cruise ship passengers on the boat, "I like the numbers where they are." Rising case numbers are not flattering to the people in charge. The news media is not the only crowd who likes spinning the truth. Politicians are notorious for it. From the President on down, there has already been a very solid pattern of behavior clearly demonstrated at downplaying this crisis at any opportunity.

Regarding the news sources, one of them is the Miami Herald which broke the huge story a few weeks ago that the "pending test result" count that used to be on the website only included State labs and not private labs. They made it out like there was some kind of cover up when the site specified that this was the case and that the State had no way to know how many swabs were sent to the labs so they couldn't tell you how many were pending.

The article does not say the State was delaying reports of the number of deaths by 9 days. It says they are delaying the public release of the reports and report details. Nothing is being sandbagged and the way the State is reporting the number of COVID-19 deaths gives a more accurate picture. They specifically delay releasing the daily death number for the most recent days on the dashboard so that it doesn't look like a huge drop when the numbers are still in flux as they wait for reports.

Florida shows about a 2X death to case ratio as NY, likely because NY has discovered more cases through much higher (than any country) per capita testing. I just mention this because if Florida was trying to cover up deaths, there should be a red flag in this ratio.

When the President made that statement and when he and others (including Dr. Fauci and other experts) were downplaying the crisis, it was at a time based on information coming out of China that made it seem relatively easy to control. The President didn't want overblown panic to hurt the economy. It wasn't until the situation in Italy became clear that anybody (including the non-partisan medical experts) really understood the severity of the outbreak.

I was following the situation closely and remember being perplexed at what was going on in Italy because it made no sense based on what was reported out of China. At this point, there is no benefit to anybody to try and downplay what is going on. Everybody understands that opening the economy will come with some level of increased cases. The idea is to do it in a way that keeps the curve flat and doesn't overwhelm the healthcare system with cases.

[Lyle Romer]

We will be filing a Letter of Intent so we can sue the state under the Taking Clause of the 5th Amendment. The state has the right to shut us down of the good of the people but we have to be fairly compensated for our business. It is as if there is a huge fire in your city. The city needs to take your building and build a firewall to save the city. The government can do that, but they have to compensate you for your business and building. What our state did was take over our business, shut it down to create a fire wall against the virus and now doesn't show any interest in compensating us for it. The letter gives us to right to come back and address this issue at a latter date and file a suit if needed, it just reserves the right to take legal action at a latter date. I don't know if there is any chance of winning a suit or not since these are uncharted waters... but I like to be able to keep that option open.

Based upon my research on the topic, I think you have very strong legal standing. There is no conceptual difference between these orders and eminent domain. If the State wants to take your home or building to build a highway, they can do it but you must receive just compensation. You are correct that with these emergency orders, the State has essentially confiscated your business except they didn't take over any of the expenses. Even if you get a PPP loan that is forgiven, they have only covered payroll and select expenses. It is also the federal government providing that loan where it is the State or local government that forced the closure (or drastic change in business model).

The other part of these orders that is clearly unconstitutional is that, by allowing "essential" businesses to operate, they are violating the equal protection clause. All people are not being treated equally under the law. If a grocery store is allowed to operate with social distancing protocols but a craft store can't operate with the same protocols, they are being treated differently.

[Mike Blakesley]

There has been a huge decrease in deaths from Cancer, Heart Attacks and many other illnesses. The claims from those in the field are anything and everything possible is being called an illness or death cased by the coronavirus. I don't know if this is true but when the state will not release the raw numbers, it makes people less trusting.

A friend of mine is a paramedic and is the EMS director and deputy coroner here in our county. He said this is absolutely true. He told me, "You can get killed skydiving, and if you happened to have COVID, they will list it as a COVID death."

I hate the thought that it's politically motivated, but I would not be in the least bit surprised to find out that it is. After all, more deaths = more bad press for certain people.

The other thing I hate is, the state of Montana has this map of individual counties with the number of cases, recovered cases, hospitalizations, etc. They hide the number of active cases, but the total cumulative number of cases is displayed big and bold for all to see. To find out how many actual, active cases there are, you need to click on a barely-noticeable tab and then subtract the deaths and recovery numbers from the cumulative total. But they don't want people to see the encouraging numbers, only the bad scary numbers.

And they wonder why people don't trust the government.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Mike, first off all, it's sad to hear your mom passed away. The circumstances we currently live in, don't really help with the process of digesting the loss of a loved one. A friend of mine, who lives in the U.S. but the rest of his family lives back over here in Europe, also had his mom pass away recently. He wasn't even able to attend his mother's funeral, because of all the travel restrictions in place...

Secondly, I think it's good to have some ingrained distrust against the government, whoever it is. Blocks of power often tend to abuse said power. But, before you fall into the trap of one of many of those conspiracy theories out there, you should keep Hanlon's razor in mind:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

When applied to governments, I often replace stupidity with incompetence, which is pretty much a synonym.

Regarding the "fudging with Coronavirus death counts": The situation is a mess globally, as every country, state, county, etc. seems to have their own way of accounting for their death cases. So, those numbers are often unreliable in both ways. The problem also is that real-time numbers are often hard to come by. Reporting deaths can, sometimes, take a few days. Reporting the actual cause of death may take even more time. Not every death is tested for COVID-19 too and in many actual COVID-19 cases it might be unclear if the cause of death was COVID-19 or not. Where there is so much uncertainty, there is also room for error, room for people to purposely color certain numbers the way it fits their agenda, but there is also a lot of room for conspiracy theories.

[Lyle Romer]

A friend of mine is a paramedic and is the EMS director and deputy coroner here in our county. He said this is absolutely true. He told me, "You can get killed skydiving, and if you happened to have COVID, they will list it as a COVID death."

I hate the thought that it's politically motivated, but I would not be in the least bit surprised to find out that it is. After all, more deaths = more bad press for certain people.

The other thing I hate is, the state of Montana has this map of individual counties with the number of cases, recovered cases, hospitalizations, etc. They hide the number of active cases, but the total cumulative number of cases is displayed big and bold for all to see. To find out how many actual, active cases there are, you need to click on a barely-noticeable tab and then subtract the deaths and recovery numbers from the cumulative total. But they don't want people to see the encouraging numbers, only the bad scary numbers.

And they wonder why people don't trust the government.

I think that the main reason for every death that can possibly be pinned on COVID to be pinned on it (even suspected cases that were never positive) is financially motivated. Hospitals are guaranteed to get paid 100% for treatment of a COVID patient either through insurance (where they don't have to worry about collecting some from the patient) or by the federal government through the CARS Act. There are certainly those who are more than happy to use the increased numbers for political motivations, even motivations as simple as playing dictator for a short time by scaring the population as much as possible.

At least in Montana you can figure out the active case count. Florida won't publish a "recovered" number because the department of health says there is no definition of a recovered COVID-19 patient. How about they don't call it recovered and just say "number of patients that tested positive at least once and subsequently tested negative twice at least 24 hours apart?"

[Bobby Henderson]

I may or may not wear a mask. We can not be required to wear on under the American Disabilities Act and the store can not ask me what kind of medical condition I might have that prevents me from wearing one. I see people in most stores half or less are wearing a mask.

How is wearing a surgical mask a disabilities thing? If someone is missing one or both arms or he's a quadriplegic in a motorized wheelchair he might be allowed some slack. But an able bodied human being? Not really. Stores do have some latitude to not allow people to enter if they're disregarding safety rules.

Just me personally, if I need to go into some store and they require me to wear a mask in order to enter, I'm not going to get my panties in a twist over it. I'll put on the mask and not be an asshole about it. There are far more important things to worry about.

No one can make me have any sympathy for the jerks in Stillwater, OK who were threatening store employees with physical violence (one even threatening to get his gun) over the fask mask thing. It's a shame the town's mayor had to rescind the rule requiring face masks to be worn in public the very same day it went into effect. He gave those assholes who were threatening violence what they wanted, which gives them the incentive to pull the same bat-shit illogical stunts the next time the city enacts some regulation those hot heads don't like.

The cold-blooded murder of that security guard in Michigan just makes the situation even more sickeningly stupid. The security guard is not the one made up the rules. But he's dead now. And at least three people are in jail facing first degree murder charges. All because a few assholes wouldn't put on a surgical mask.

It's shit like this that makes me wonder if maybe what this country needs is for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to go into complete out of control spread. Maybe we need to learn about what pandemics can do the hard way. Because the reality is not sinking in at this point. Maybe if it burns through 70%-80% of our nation's 328 million people, kills a couple or so million directly, kills millions of others in need of treatment indirectly, and creates a tidal wave of tragedy, sorrow and poverty we might look at a situation like this as more than just a rights violating inconvenience the next time.

We will be filing a Letter of Intent so we can sue the state under the Taking Clause of the 5th Amendment. The state has the right to shut us down of the good of the people but we have to be fairly compensated for our business.

If your state government's finances are anything like Oklahoma good look trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip. The feds are telling states bleeding red ink to "go file bankruptcy."

We are a resort town but the town near us is where the medial offices are including the hospital. What our customers are telling us is that medical personal are being laid off, that the hospitals are not busy.

It's common knowledge why this is happening around the country. Most hospitals have cancelled all elective procedures and are trying to limit as many other procedures as possible to protect those patients from SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Hospitals are bleeding an ocean of red ink as a result. Hence all the layoffs. Only so many doctors and nurses can work in a hospital's ICU or makeshift COVID-19 ward. The tin foil hat people point to near empty hospital parking lots as "proof" this pandemic is over-blown. Idiots. If they bothered with some details they would learn a lot of that parking lot traffic comes from all those other procedures the hospitals cancelled. Most hospitals are not allowing visitors, so that's even less parking lot traffic.

There has been a huge decrease in deaths from Cancer, Heart Attacks and many other illnesses. The claims from those in the field are anything and everything possible is being called an illness or death cased by the coronavirus.

It's also common knowledge that there is a significant number of un-diagnosed COVID-19 deaths, some of which are being discovered as misdiagnosed deaths from influenza due to postmortem SARS-CoV-2 testing later. When local health care systems get overwhelmed with a rush of COVID-19 patients it is going to lead to more deaths from other causes. The health care system has only so much treatment capacity. The fatality rate for incidents like heart attack and stroke are going to go way up in that environment. The same goes for on-going medical problems like cancer, diabetes, etc.

The theory is the hospitals get more money from treating people with coronavirus.. I don't know if that is true or not.

I've heard that story before. It sounds like bullshit to me. A bunch of these people the hospitals are treating don't have the money to pay the fortune of health care bills piling up. And it's sure as shit guaranteed the insurance companies are going to try their best to wriggle their way out of paying (that is if the patient even has any health insurance coverage).