"[T]he mortality rate among patients over age 65 exceeded 26 percent, and almost all patients over 65 who needed mechanical ventilation during that period died."

According to a new JAMA article (which studied coronavirus patients in Northwell Health hospitals "in and around New York City"), reported in "Do You Want to Die in an I.C.U.? Pandemic Makes Question All Too Real/Sobering statistics for older patients sharpen the need to draw up advanced directives for treatment and share them with their families" (NYT).

A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine questioned 180 patients over age 60 with serious illnesses; most said they would trade a year of life if that meant they could avoid dying in an I.C.U. on life support.... “Many older patients we’ve encountered with Covid-19 have opted not to undergo ventilation and an I.C.U.,” Dr. White said. “No one should impose that on a patient, though if there’s true scarcity, that may arise. But patients might choose it for themselves.”...

While you're thinking about that, here's the ad the NYT served up for me in the middle of the article:



"More than 20% of Americans think vampires are real/More than 25% think climate change is not"... therefore you might want to donate $1,000 to the World Health Organization. We're supposed to worry that a fifth to a quarter of Americans are so science-ignorant that we should give money to an organization that may or may not represent good science. How would I know? Well, one thing is: I'm wondering if it is really true that 20% of Americans think vampires are real, because if they don't, then the organization is passing on fake statistics and that's evidence against its dedication to good science!

Here's a study from last year (at YouGov) that says 13% of Americans believe in vampires — 14% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats. And here's an IPSOS survey from last year that said "Almost half of Americans believe that ghosts are real (46%), and a third believe that aliens visit earth (32%), while only a small amount believe in vampires (7%) and zombies (6%)."

For $1,000, you need to do better with the statistics. And now I'm wondering about the value of the statistics about how likely you are to die if you're over 65 and end up on a ventilator. Just as the World Health Organization wants its donations, the health care system would benefit if you decline its services and accept home-based death.

"It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet. This is giving us an opportunity to magically see how much better it can be."

Said Duke University conservation scientist Stuart Pimm, quoted in "As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner. These before-and-after images show the change" (by AP science writer Seth Borenstein, published at Madison.com).

Another quote — from Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: "In many ways we kind of whacked the Earth system with a sledgehammer and now we see what Earth's response is."

With photographs and maps, the article concentrates on the reduction in air pollution. There's also a bit about wild animals taking the opportunity to show themselves on city streets. But I'd like to see more about climate change.

All the article says is:

The greenhouse gases that trap heat and cause climate change stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, so the pandemic shutdown is unlikely to affect global warming, says Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. Carbon dioxide levels are still rising, but not as fast as last year.

But this can be viewed as an experimental head start on the Green New Deal we've heard so much about. What had seemed impossible to begin is now a way of life we've plunged into. We've gone much further than what the climate activists were proposing, though we've done it for a different reason, by government order, under the fear of death by disease, and seemingly only for a few weeks (or months).

Why aren't people saying that when we emerge in phases from this lockdown — as we must, or we face economic doom — we should not attempt to go back to everything that we were doing before but go forward into some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?

Shouldn't the Democrats be saying this? Where's Joe Biden?

Could Donald Trump and the Republicans offer something like this? I know the term "Green New Deal" has a Democratic Party sound to it, but why can't they present something visionary and future-looking that inspires hope instead of merely presuming that what's best is whatever we happened to have had in the past?

"Greenland lost a near-record 600 billion tons of ice last summer, raising sea levels."

WaPo headline.

The mass loss from Greenland alone was enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2 millimeters, the study found.

BIDEN: "Number one, no more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, no more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore, no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one."

The man on the moderate side of the one-on-one debate said something so extreme.

Joe Biden: “no more, no new fracking” in my administrationhttps://t.co/gnHCex8NPv pic.twitter.com/bwvLaU2VyB

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 16, 2020

Here's the full transcript of the debate. That line came from the section of the debate that was about climate change. Biden had called climate change the "single greatest threat to our national security," because of the "great migrations" that will, he believes, occur.  The moderator Jake Tapper had asked him why his "climate plan" has a $1.7 trillion when Sanders's plan is priced at $14 trillion.

"Is your plan ambitious enough?" Tapper prodded, and Biden talked about mass transportation and asserted: "We can lay down the tracks where nothing can be changed by the next president or following president, the one beyond that." 

Then it was Bernie's turn, and he said we need "courage" to "take on the fossil fuel industry" which has been "lying for years" about climate change and ought to "be held criminally accountable." And "It's not a question of money" because it's "a world-changing event."

With that challenge, given a chance to respond, Biden said the line in the post title:

Number one, no more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, no more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore, no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one.

"Isolation and other shifts in behavior during the coronavirus outbreak could also alter our greenhouse gas emissions. But will the changes stick?"

Wonders John Schwartz (in the NYT).

The strategies of avoiding coronavirus — staying home, not flying and driving, using on-line shopping — also reduce your carbon footprint. This social distancing is a green new deal... if it persists. Ever start something for one reason and then continue it for another?

Charles Duhigg, the author of “The Power of Habit” and a former New York Times reporter, said habits built over lifetimes are hard to shake. “As soon as the environment becomes stable again, the habit starts to reassert itself” unless there is a “powerful reward” to the new behavior.

Mr. Duhigg said that while there is no set time for a habit to form or change, some cultural habits could, if the pandemic response lasts long enough, take hold. One example: shaking hands. “I could see other kinds of behavior replacing that habit, or maybe just diminishing,” and wondered aloud whether his own children might one day think “hand shaking is a weird, old-timey thing.”

Yeah, but shaking hands didn't affect your carbon footprint (handprint?).

Some practices, like videoconferencing and telecommuting, may gain ground, Mr. Duhigg said, for a reward of saved time and trouble. He expressed doubts, however, that leisure travel behavior would see a similar shift. “It seems unlikely to me that people will say, ‘You know, I loved not taking vacations. I learned staying at home with my kids is so rewarding!’”

Oh, the sarcasm! What I'm picturing is a married couple where one of them says I loved staying home, and the other is massively alarmed if not angry. The one then adds the climate change factor to his (and I do mean "his") side of the argument, and the other explodes in a confetti burst of wokeism. Ha ha, the anti-travelist wins! The erstwhile bucket list kicks the bucket, and the forced stay at home goes on and on... until death comes to take that frustrated travel bug on that long-anticipated, truly exotic trip — out of the world altogether.