By Paula Schmitt *(Opinion) The Rolling Stone publication published a post implicating the star Woody Harrelson of spreading anti-vax conspiracies after he provided a monologue on Saturday Night Live.In his speech, Harrelson jokes about a stupid and incredible script that must be thrown out before being made into a movie.The film-that-wasnt had the following plot: The greatest drug cartels in the world get together and purchase up all the media and all the political leaders and force all the people worldwide to remain secured their houses, and individuals can only come out if they take the cartels drugs-- and keep taking them, over and over.
The Rolling Stone journalist didnt like the joke; I presume it was due to the fact that he saw himself in it.(Woody Harrelson in action)But he might not have liked it due to the fact that he didnt comprehend it.
Thats what happens to individuals who are paid not to comprehend-- they end up not understanding for real.This is a popular mental phenomenon.Take the case of a placebo: an inert compound with no active part, which can still deal with and even cure a health problem if the individual is encouraged of its power.But there is a concept that might help the Rolling Stone journalist comprehend both the joke and the pandemic: Show me the incentives, and Ill reveal you the results.
Todays short article is the first in a series that will set out a list of crucial rewards in identifying the direction this pandemic will take and the outcomes it will achieve.I will draw the explanation on behalf of those paid not to understand.Then Ill discuss the drawing-- my modest homage to Woody Harrelson (an old crush) and Rolling Stone (a magazine that published 2 of my short articles in its Brazilian edition: one about Lebanon and another about the CERN lab).
A crucial warning: the joke Im about to discuss is not funny.The first thing to comprehend about this pandemic is that Covid has actually literally been rewarded.
The more Covid, the bigger the prize.One of those rewards started by setting the trend from the bottom in hospitals: beds booked for Covid got much more public money than beds reserved for any other illness.
If a Medicare client is detected with-- or perhaps presumed to have contracted-- coronavirus, health centers throughout the United States are offered more cash from the federal government to treat that client, economic evaluations show [...] The amount paid can triple if the client requires a ventilator, says Fox News in a short article from May 2020, when the president was Donald Trump, not Biden.The scheme, admits the report, makes some wonder whether there is a monetary incentive to overstate coronavirus numbers.
At the beginning of the pandemic, official Trump administration rates figured out that beds for Covid should get a minimum of 20% more tax-payer cash.
Imagine two Medicare patients, one with Covid-19 and another not, with pneumonia in the same ICU.
Medicare will pay, for example, US$ 10,000 for the pneumonia patient who does not have Covid-19 and US$ 12,000 for the patient who does, says Doug Badger, visiting fellow for domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Our verdict: True, states the USA Today fact-checking piece on the topic.
Hospitals and physicians do get paid more for Medicare clients diagnosed with Covid-19 or if its considered presumed they have Covid-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and 3 times more if the clients are placed on a ventilator to cover the expense of care and loss of business arising from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases.
In Brazil, it was no various.
As this article from Gazeta do Povo says, in the state of Paran, each bed booked for Covid-19 yields to the health center an indemnity of R$ 800 daily for the dedication not to occupy it, leaving it free for Covid patients.
When the bed is occupied [with a Covid patient], the day-to-day rate boosts to R$ 1,600.
Simply put, hospitals were paid not to receive individuals with any illness other than Covid.The faith in the Covidian sect beautified even those who did not have any Covid clients at all due to the fact that hope in Covid never passes away.
The state [of Paran] still pays a day-to-day rate of R$ 300 for infirmary beds triggered for patients contaminated or simply thought of having the coronavirus, despite whether they inhabit them or not.
As we can see, what counts in these examples is not the client nor even the bed the client does (not) occupy.
What actually matters is the Covid record in the official statistics.That number is valuable.
Or expensive, as it so happens.There was another advantage for hospitals that preferred covid over other illness: While the average occupancy time of a general ICU is 4.5 days per patient, verified cases of Covid-19 have actually needed extensive take care of, on average, 13.5 days.
In So Paulo, private medical facilities had no reason to complain-- the pandemic was really profitable.According to a report by G1, mayor Bruno Covas revealed that he would quadruple the ICU beds for Covid and pay R$ 2,100 per day for each bed.
For context, the minimum month-to-month wage in Brazil is R$ 1,320.
In other areas of Brazil, Coronapalooza was likewise a success.The Dirio do Nordeste newspaper reported in March 2021 that the cost to keep a Covid ICU bed is R$ 2,666.67 each day, so the monthly investment in this kind of devices differs from R$ 80,000 to R$ 82,600.
The quantity is double what is needed to preserve a ward job, whose daily expenditure is R$ 1,233.33, amounting to between R$ 37,000 and R$ 38,200 monthly.
If you believe its odd that a respiratory health problem pays more per bed than an automobile mishap or cancer, wait till you learn what you get if you are fortunate sufficient to die from it.In the United States, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) pays up to US$ 9,000 in assistance for those who pass away of Covid (or with Covid---- a information I plan to blog about one day).
According to several regional reports, no serpentine governmental meandering is required to launch that financial help-- one requires a relative, a doctor, or a funeral director to accredit the cause of death as Covid.In So Paulo, the federal government of Joo Doria did something similar: 6 regular monthly installments of R$ 300 to families who lost a minimum of one member due to Covid.The official federal government website has a page describing how it works, but it appears offline.
I made a print of the excerpt that appears in the duckduckgo search, where it is possible to see Joo Dorias generosity in all its splendor.The very first thing to understand about this pandemic is that Covid has actually been rewarded.
The more covid, the bigger the prize.
(Photo web recreation)As reported by G1, the advantage is cumulative, and the more deaths in the family, the greater the payment.It is affordable to picture that scams and forgery must have taken place.Ingenious minds definitely had no issue discovering ethical justifications to lie about the cause of death-- whats the harm in creating an illness in somebody who has already passed away if that lie makes the situation simpler for those still alive?Why not honor the dead with a much better coffin or more flowers at the wake? And if tax is theft, why not recuperate a few of what has been stolen?All indications indicate one conclusion: the reality didnt matter.Government, authorities, and vaccine pushers required a statistical reason from the dead and their family members, and they rewarded those who gave it to them.I personally understand of several dozen, possibly more than a hundred, cases in which relatives were pressured to accept Covid as the cause of death of someone who did not have covid, much less passed away from it.In at least 10 cases, the family needed to employ a lawyer and file a claim to fix the death certificate and guarantee that the cause of death entered on the document was the actual cause, not the preferred cause.Ill finish this post with some outstanding news.In the first year of the Covid pandemic, deaths from influenza in the United States had the most considerable drop in history.Check this out: In the 2019 to 2020 flu season, there were 22,000 deaths.
The year prior to, there were more than 34,000 deaths.But in the first year of the pandemic, the influenza virus got scared by Covid and disappeared nearly totally, eliminating just 600 people.What a relief.
* Paula Schmitt is a reporter and author with an MA in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from the American University of Beirut.
She is the author of the fiction book Eudemonia and the non-fiction Spies .
She won the Bandeirantes Radiojournalism Award, was a Middle East reporter for SBT and Radio France, and was a political columnist for Folha de S.Paulo and Estado de S.
Paulo.
* This short article was originally released in Portuguese on the political site Poder360.comWoody.mp4?