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Thread: Town’s response to Covid-19 crisis

  1. #16
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    Lancaster updated Covid-19 stats

    4-25-2020 – 138 confirmed Covid-19 cases

    4-20-2020 – 95 confirmed Covid-19 cases

    4-10-2020 – 67 confirmed Covid-19 cases

    Nursing Home Deaths – 11 as of 4-23-2020

    As testing numbers increase, we can expect to see the confirmed coronavirus numbers increase. However, still no word from the town on Lancaster:

    Number of deaths
    Hospitalizations
    ICU numbers

    Sad that the town can't get this information from the county.

  2. #17
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    Here is a look at the Covid-19 numbers through 7 p.m. Monday 4/27/2020:

    WNY:

    Total cases - 3,908
    Total deaths - 277
    Death Ratio – 7.1%

    Erie County
    3,109 cases
    Covid-19 deaths - 233
    Death ratio – 7.49%

    Lancaster

    164 confirmed cases
    Reported deaths – 11 Harris Hill Nursing Home
    Town Deaths -???

    At a 7% death ratio, Lancaster would expect 8 deaths.11 reported at Nursing Facility. How many Town resident deaths? Clarification, please!

  3. #18
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    You wont get a good look at the numbers. HIPA laws protect the person or family’s.
    Covid 19 related, positive Covid 19 cases or common flu are all listed now as a Covid death.
    Many Doctors offices have seen these symptoms for months starting in October way before anyone started tracking any numbers.

  4. #19
    Member mark blazejewski's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lanc View Post
    HIPA laws protect the person or family’s.
    How does HIPA apply to a single "number" whose sole purpose is to be applied to an impersonal aggregate figure for public dissemination?

    If a murder occurs or a victim is seriously injured in the commission of a crime, does not that general information appear in crime statistics?
    Last edited by mark blazejewski; April 28th, 2020 at 08:31 AM.
    LIDA Member Rinow to Member Ruda: You were a sitting Trustee on the Board. Did you help support Mr. Sweeney getting a seat on the CDC Board?"

  5. #20
    Member mark blazejewski's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lanc View Post
    Many Doctors offices have seen these symptoms for months starting in October way before anyone started tracking any numbers.
    Thank you for having the courage to relate those comments.

    I'm not tin foil hat, but my wife and I LAST SUMMER, had a weird, long-lasting cold, the likes of which neither of us had ever experienced. That cold lasted, without exaggeration, from June through at least early September.

    Particularly curious about the "cold" was a long-term loss of taste and smell, along with a persistent, hacking cough.

    I am not saying we had Covid-19, but in light of your comments which contradict all of the publicly presented information (which I simply do not trust), I think our experiences were worth posting.
    LIDA Member Rinow to Member Ruda: You were a sitting Trustee on the Board. Did you help support Mr. Sweeney getting a seat on the CDC Board?"

  6. #21
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    After a trip to the Carolinas our trip back on the plane had many lightly coughing. A few days after i was coughing, loss of breath and contacted my doctor. They did not want to see me and prescribed the Z pac. And said get rest. A week later was still rough.
    This was back in early November. Doctors were seeing Flu cases that did not match common cold or flu.

    I really do not believe the numbers associated with Covid.
    i do feel that many of the deaths are and will come from compromised elderly.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lanc View Post
    After a trip to the Carolinas our trip back on the plane had many lightly coughing. A few days after i was coughing, loss of breath and contacted my doctor. They did not want to see me and prescribed the Z pac. And said get rest. A week later was still rough.
    This was back in early November. Doctors were seeing Flu cases that did not match common cold or flu.

    I really do not believe the numbers associated with Covid.
    i do feel that many of the deaths are and will come from compromised elderly.
    I understand and appreciate your HIPA comments and other related comments.

    I, and others, are not expecting details but information as to whether there was one Covid-19 death registered / reported outside of the Harris Hill Nursing Facility 11 deaths.

    Supervisor Ruffino and his Emergency Management Director say that they are unable to get any information from the County.

    Lancaster reported Covid-19 cases are surpassing other Towns that were once much higher than Lancaster. A month ago Supervisor Ruffino spoke about using tough measures to stop the spread – yet the increasing numbers tell us the spread is taking place. Case numbers in themselves are useless when it comes to making a determination whether they are increasing because of more testing taking place, and/or the deadliness involved.

    Tell us what is taking place and whether the good practices residents are taking is making a difference.

    How safe am I in my own town?

  8. #23
    Member mark blazejewski's Avatar
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    The Ruffino administration previously appeared to have had meaningful numbers on April 6 in order to justify its imposition of "Pause" measures.

    From the Lancaster Bee, April 8,2020...

    Ruffino said the number of positive coronavirus cases just keep going up. As of Wednesday morning, there are 41 COVID-19 cases in the Town and Village of Lancaster, and a section of Depew east of Transit Road. There are currently 85 cases in the Cheektowaga/Sloan area and a section of Depew west of Transit Road.
    Does it not appear the longer this "Pause" goes on, the less information we are provided?...


    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Chowaniec View Post
    Supervisor Ruffino and his Emergency Management Director say that they are unable to get any information from the County.
    What has happened to the previous information flow?

    Without such county information, how is the Ruffino administration assessing the success of the "Pause" measures, including information necessary for any refinement of the existing measures?

    Do the Ruffino administration apply crisis management based upon hearsay and anecdote, or on hard, unbiased facts?

    More concerning, if the County in fact is not cooperating with the Supervisor's requests for information, I will be the first to publicly support such requests and assist him and the Council in realizing such discovery.

    So, why is it that Supervisor Ruffino appears not to be making a public case to compel county disclosure?
    Last edited by mark blazejewski; April 28th, 2020 at 02:44 PM.
    LIDA Member Rinow to Member Ruda: You were a sitting Trustee on the Board. Did you help support Mr. Sweeney getting a seat on the CDC Board?"

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Chowaniec View Post
    Supervisor Ruffino and his Emergency Management Director say that they are unable to get any information from the County...


    ...Tell us what is taking place and whether the good practices residents are taking is making a difference.

    How safe am I in my own town?

    JUST MY UNDERSTANDINGS AND OPINIONS:


    To plan for the future, one must have a solid understanding of the present, my opinion of course.

    To date, I understand that the Ruffino administration holds that Erie County has not provided Lancaster with up-to-date information regarding the prevalence of the Covid-19 virus within the Lancaster family, nor has it related any further information on Covid-19 deaths in Lancaster, or deaths involving Lancaster residents in hospital settings.

    If such is truly the case, would not one think that our Supervisor would be making a loud and public vocal appeal to those in Erie County government for those statistics and numbers?

    Today, Supervisor Ruffino held a press conference with the Supervisors of Evans and Grand Island.

    I note that Mr. Ruffino's joint press conference did not include any supervisors of towns contiguous to Lancaster, nor does the video suggest an appearance by, or the participation of, any of the remaining Lancaster Town Council members, the Mayors of Lancaster's component villages, or any other elected official of the comprehensive Lancaster community.

    More urgently, based on my perusal, I note that Supervisor spoke to his concerns regarding what is in my opinion the worthy, but far less important, issue of the loss of sales tax revenue, to the exclusion of the urgent need for the purportedly unattainable statistical Lancaster information. That information, I believe, is necessary not only to test and evaluate the effectiveness of Lancaster's Pause, but may be essential to the future preservation of life and health, as well as to future economic and business planning.

    The usefulness of the press conference was in my opinion, significantly diminished by the seeming lack of inclusiveness regarding all of Lancaster's collective elected officials, and most troubling, by what seems to me to have been a squandered Ruffino opportunity to publicly confront what the Ruffino administration is said to suggested has been the county's failure to provide the Ruffino administration with such vital, up-to-date information.

    Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odup...ature=youtu.be
    Last edited by mark blazejewski; April 28th, 2020 at 08:06 PM.
    LIDA Member Rinow to Member Ruda: You were a sitting Trustee on the Board. Did you help support Mr. Sweeney getting a seat on the CDC Board?"

  10. #25
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    5-2-2020 Buffalo News Covid-19 stats

    Erie County

    3,410 Covid-19 reported cases
    Covid-19 deaths - 266
    Death ratio – 7.8%
    Hospitalizations – 253 (0 on March 23)
    ICU patients - 108

    Lancaster

    173 confirmed Covid-19 cases
    175 confirmed Covid-19 cases on 5/1/2020 - ???
    Reported deaths – 11 Harris Hill Nursing Home
    Reported resident deaths -???*
    Hospitalizations - ???*
    ICU patients - ???*

    *There have been Lancaster Covid-19 deaths and there have been and are Lancaster residents hospitalized and in ICU. Town representatives and even the media is being denied access to that information by county and state governments and/or supporting health institutions. Other Erie County municipalities are seeking like information and being stonewalled.

    Lancaster confirmed Covid-19 cases are increasing in number over measured periods:

    4-10-2020 – 67 confirmed Covid-19 cases
    4-20-2020 – 95 confirmed Covid-19 cases
    4-25-2020 – 138 confirmed Covid-19 cases
    5-1 – 2020 – 175 confirmed Covid-19 cases

    More available testing may be influencing the increase rate. But then again, how do we know. A month ago Lancaster Covid-19 cases lagged far behind several other towns in number (some smaller in population, some larger). Today we have passed several of those towns (except Amherst and Cheektowaga) – some by a large number

    Reliable data is a requisite for making sound determinations / decisions. Here we have no data available and are in the dark to determine the severity / seriousness of Covid-19 in Lancaster. No data to determine whether Lancaster residents are following suggested best practices to stop the spread and whether such practices are in vain. Sad!

    How safe is my town?

  11. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Chowaniec View Post

    *There have been Lancaster Covid-19 deaths and there have been and are Lancaster residents hospitalized and in ICU. Town representatives and even the media is being denied access to that information by county and state governments and/or supporting health institutions. Other Erie County municipalities are seeking like information and being stonewalled.


    How safe is my town?
    I am faithfully following Lancaster "Pause" guidelines, but to what end?

    Lancaster's line, "Pause" enforcement and "punishments," notwithstanding, I understand is trending up; not down."

    Will we be told that absent the rather draconian rules the numbers would be far worse, or are the powers-that-be applying those strict behavioral limitations to the exclusion of more effective interventions?

    Is our town safe Lee?

    Who knows?!
    Last edited by mark blazejewski; May 2nd, 2020 at 02:09 PM.
    LIDA Member Rinow to Member Ruda: You were a sitting Trustee on the Board. Did you help support Mr. Sweeney getting a seat on the CDC Board?"

  12. #27
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    No one can be certain if any of this stuff is really helping. Go to the store and look at all the masks that are nothing more than pieces of t-shirt, masks worn improperly. Now that the testing has become more generalized it’s becoming clear that the mortality rate is below 1%, more like 0.3%. And as they identify more people testing positive we’ll find that the vast majority of cases resolve on their own without much medical intervention. The reported numbers are aggregate numbers and don’t represent the number of people hospitalized or even currently ill. I saw numbers the other day that said that about 3/4 of the deaths were in people over 70 and that something like 90% of hospitalizations involved patients with secondary medical conditions that complicate their care and recovery. This is no surprise and exactly what we were told to expect. Perhaps had the quarantine efforts been aimed at the elderly and those with secondary conditions and let the rest of us live our lives the result might have been different. Sure, a lot of people would’ve called in sick for a few days over the span of several weeks. When I was a kid the rule of thumb was 10% absence and we got a day or 2 off so that people could heal and to let it pass. But by now the worst of the whole thing might be over. Don’t forget there were 10’s of thousands of deaths from flu this year and CDC stopped counting a month ago because “flu season” was considered over. And millions of Americans had had flu shots to protect them. Not to minimize the pain suffered by those who lost loved ones but people tend to lose their objectivity over this stuff because of the daily parade of stories of those who died...as if everyone is dying of the virus which certainly isn’t the case. And that parade is being led by the Buffalo News and other outlets which sincerely love the totalitarian Cuomo. And don’t forget the death rate in NY is higher than it should be because our governor basically launched biological warfare against the nursing home industry, killing thousands unnecessarily. I told my kids back in late January when the stories began to rev up that the stuff was already here and that it would be almost impossible to stop. It’s a virus, you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it and there’s no way to tell where it is. It’s not a rabid animal you can lock in the garage until you can find a gun and shoot it.
    Last edited by grump; May 2nd, 2020 at 10:03 PM.

  13. #28
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    Don’t swallow the line being pushed by Democratic Totalitarians that we have to be able to test everybody before we can reopen the economy. Testing is nice and it gives information that has some value but it’s a snapshot. It tells you next to nothing that is of value in a dynamic economy. How often do you test? After all, your co-employee Dick Hurtz might be virus free on testing day but acquire the disease overnight. You gonna shut down all local business again because of that or you just gonna tell Dick to stay home til he feels better? Testing yields gross data that helps measure the morbidity rate of the virus, info regarding those most prone to serious complications etc. But claiming that we can’t reopen the economy until no one tests positive is rank foolishness, of exactly the type we’ve come to expect from the Democratic Totalitarians. We can’t test 350 million Americans every day.

  14. #29
    Member mark blazejewski's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by grump View Post
    And don’t forget the death rate in NY is higher than it should be because our governor basically launched biological warfare against the nursing home industry, killing thousands unnecessarily.
    It has come to the politically-correct point that it seems as though one simply can not express any concerns or objections regarding the decisions of Leftist authorities, so thank you for pointing this out Grump.

    I have previously commended Cuomo for being a strong advocate for New York State in his dealings with the national government, and from a perceived total immersion standpoint, his solid, omnipresent performance.

    I have also noted that my praise stops there.

    As a family member, I was very troubled and perplexed by his decision to force nursing homes to accept those who tested positive for Covid-19. I have a very elderly cousin who was in rehab at a local nursing home and was discharged one day before the Governor's order took effect.

    Good outcome for her; calamitous for the state and the frail elderly in those facilities.

    I am tempted to write that if President Trump had issued such an order, the Leftist nut jobs would have characterized his decision as decreed euthanasia, and labeled the facilities as the heirs to Sonnenstein. But I won't.
    Last edited by mark blazejewski; May 3rd, 2020 at 09:41 AM.
    LIDA Member Rinow to Member Ruda: You were a sitting Trustee on the Board. Did you help support Mr. Sweeney getting a seat on the CDC Board?"

  15. #30
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    Overwhelmed by the Covid-19 data? Here are 8 rules for understanding the numbers
    By Cory Franklin
    CHICAGO TRIBUNE

    During the coronavirus epidemic, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by data – confirmed cases, deaths per million, case fatality rates, etc. They are imprecise numbers that are often misquoted or quoted out of context. This, in turn, generates political pronouncements, scientific observations and media punditry that is frequently wrong, but rarely uncertain. So much information, what to believe? Here are eight tips on how to consider
    the numbers:

    1.

    All models are wrong.

    Some are useful. Models are mathematical descriptions of the real world used for calculations and predictions. They depend on assumptions and the numbers entered. Every model is an imperfect tool. This is evident from the wide variance in predictions of Covid-19 deaths, from several million to the current figure nearing 60,000, which we have already surpassed. Politicians use models to formulate policy, but models are always incomplete and wise policymakers must understand this.

    2.
    Long-range projections are typically less accurate than short-range projections.

    It’s easier to predict tomorrow’s weather than it is to predict next week’s. Conditions are always changing, and forecasters must account for uncertainty. In the coronavirus pandemic, different countries use different models and develop different strategies. Great Britain changed its policy midstream when scientists revised their models.

    3.
    Numbers are a representation of reality, not reality itself.

    The point of numbers is to help understand the reality of what’s happening. A philosopher once said, “the map is not the territory,” meaning there is a difference between a description of something and the thing itself. A good example of using numbers but ignoring reality was how some people describe Covid-19 as not much worse than the flu, based on the number of deaths from both. The comparison is inapt; flu deaths are a roughly defined estimate per season derived from multiple projections. In contrast, Covid-19 deaths have actually been observed over a period of weeks, and most deaths are clearly attributable to the virus. Only rarely has seasonal flu forced the creation of temporary field hospitals and morgues.

    4.
    Numbers require context.

    Adjust numbers to the size of the population. California illustrates how case numbers and deaths should be normalized to the size of the population. California is fifth in the number of total cases in the United States, but 30th in cases per capita. The state remains a mystery as to why it has a dramatically lower caseload and death total than expected, normalized for its size.

    5.
    There is no perfect number.

    No number is exact. The number of cases of Covid-19 is far from precise – it is an obvious undercount because not everyone has been tested. But it is a useful number for establishing trends. Likewise, some death figures are overcounts, others are undercounts and no one can say which predominates or by how much. But the measured number is a reliable, uniform outcome and helps us understand these trends, which is our ultimate goal. Rather than automatically discarding imperfect numbers as some advocate, try to understand their imperfections.

    6.
    Trends are more important than single values.

    The coronavirus has proved unpredictable – what was true yesterday may not be true today. To observe trends, information is more accurate when it is collected over time. A single value is a snapshot, many values over time are a movie.

    7.
    Beware of cherry-picking.

    We are often treated to articles with headlines such as “What the U.S. can learn from some other country” or “What one state got right.” No two regions are completely comparable. It’s tempting to select some place to illustrate a point that does not hold up under scrutiny. Canada is widely praised for its approach to the pandemic, but the Canadian profile of cases and deaths is similar to that of South Carolina, which has been excoriated for its approach. Similar numbers, different interpretation.

    8.
    Known knowns.

    Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained the uncertainty of complex situations when he said of the Iraq War, “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

    Among the known unknowns in the uncertainty of the coronavirus epidemic are how the virus is transmitted and especially how it is transmitted by asymptomatic carriers; whether recovery means immunity to the virus; whether viral transmission will be deterred by warm weather; whether antivirals currently being tested will be effective; whether a timely vaccine can be developed; and how many people in the United States actually carry the virus. The unknown unknowns? There are many, and we don’t know what they are.

    There are pitfalls everywhere. When reading about this pandemic, don’t be discouraged. No one has all the answers.


    In the Town of Lancaster we know nothing of what's taking place in our town. Outside of confirmed Covid-19 cases, NADA!

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