Two emergency room doctors on opposite sides of the country are in critical condition after contracting the novel coronavirus.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1297233
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1297233
“… sometimes transmission may happen despite our best efforts.”
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Wishing you both strong immune system! Get well soon and thank you for your service!
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The appellation first responder is taking on new meaning. The emergency is now coming to the responders rather than the reverse, at hospitals and urgent care centers country wide. These doctors and physician’s assistants and nurses are heroic.
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These are the real heroes (literally) putting their lives on the line to save total strangers.
While Trump and an ass-kissing cadre of phoneys sit around in an echo chamber, lauding each other.
At least Nero had a talent in addition to self promotion, and offered some music while everyone died.
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Mike Pence is kidnapped by ISIS, who demand a $20 billion ransom or they will burn the vice president to death. All Americans are requested to contribute what they can to resolve the situation. A poor American citizen is asked to give what he can says, “I’m really sorry I can’t give more, but I hope you’ll accept this 5 gallons of gasoline,”
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ER doctors. Sooner or later this would happen. It came sooner. Bless 'em.
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This is awful but inevitable especially given the diddling done by this administration. Trump has no idea how bad this may get and he thinks his administration is doing a great job. We need to keep our doctors and nurses well so there is someone there to treat us.
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Comrade Azar is giving his address to the American people to calm their fears that he is not just a pawn of the medical-industrial complex, “I would like to speak to you directly and from the heart. We will do all in our power to protect the American people colon and any unnecessary loss of life. We have parenthesis look straight into the camera parenthesis all the resources for not just a good outcome dash but an all caps great outcome exclamation point. Ha dash ha.”
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I don’t understand the alarmist attitude about testing positive for CV.
There should only be alarm if the rate of infections begins to cause crisis in terms of hospitalization demands. Otherwise 80% of folks will have mild symptoms & not need hospitalization.
Only high risk groups & those with comordities have greater risk of dying.
The alarmist attitudes are unwarranted.
Health care personnel contract infectious diseases all the time from patients, CV is no different.
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I am proud of your competence, dedication and, most of all, your bravery.
Most of all their bravery. Like Atticus Finch said, courage isn’t always a man with a gun in his hand. May they recover, go home, and be honored.
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Right. The entire world is wrong, except for you.
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Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
Emily Dickenson wrote the epitaph for the Trump era long ago.
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Thanks. I’ll make a special point of shrugging and taking it in stride if you find yourself sicker than you’ve ever been in your life, coughing blood and having difficulty breathing. Your number was up, no big, what’s on TV tonight?
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So, if 100 million Americans get infected (which is in the range of the expected spread if we don’t do anything about it), that means that 20 million will need hospitalization. Out of that 100 million, something like 5 million will need serious intervention, like an ICU bed, to hope to survive (the other 15 million likely can survive through oxygen and medication that may help treat their symptoms until their body regains control). There are on order 100,000 ICU beds that can be used to treat people with this now, and they can be in those beds for weeks while recovering. If you double it, and say each takes an average of a month, then there are only 2.4 million ICU slots for the 5 million people who need one…which means that 2.6 million Americans die without receiving the care they need.
That’s just running numbers to give an idea of how serious this really could be…it was running away like that in Wuhan before China locked everything down and flooded the city and province with health workers and supplies. Italy is going through this now, and their medical system is starting to fail…other European systems are on the same path, as are we. If we don’t lock the nation down, especially the places that have community spread and increasing cases, then the above is what will happen…and those 80% who don’t have to be concerned are the reason why the rest will have serious issues, as they will just spread it without thinking it’s big deal.
People aren’t taking this seriously, not really, and it’s going to be a huge tragedy when the exponential surge happens…a lot of people will die who didn’t need to.
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What this piece misses the larger point (and I don’t fault Josh for it) is that it is using the framing assumptions of containment still being at its foundation. We don’t know who has COVID-19 at this point. Asymptomatic healthy person these doctors came into contact with outside the hospital, asymptomatic COVID patient coming in for entirely different reason (injury for example), we simply don’t know because we have no picture of amount of infection in the community (due to relatively zero testing of the community as a whole).
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What part of “critical condition” did you not understand?
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I get the eerie impression the cavalry is not coming. The Kern County Health Department was downsized over the past decades, and county tax revenues remain highly dependent on oil prices, which of late have gone through the floor. Are overflow facilities being prepared in the local gyms? Nope. Anybody looking in on the elderly? Nope. Any contingency plans in place as to what happens when there aren’t enough ICU beds? Nope. Any covid-19 testing at all? A dozen tests on a population of 1 million people, and the results on most of those tests have yet to come back. If you scale such negligence up to national scale, the earlier projections of 100-200,000 deaths looks pretty conservative. Koreans defended their hospital resources, distributing testing to off-site stations and diverting infected with moderate cases to gyms and rec centers to get them out of general circulation, while providing beds, food and low-grade entertainment. They also used the cellphone to keep the public informed.
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It’s down to state and local authorities now. In my own area the governor has declared that my county and several adjoining others lock down because we’ve had people turning up sick. Any public business closes except for food and pharmacies. If they don’t do it voluntarily they can be compelled. The experts seem to think this period is crucial if we’re going to get through this with minimal deaths. People have to stop circulating around freely. I’m glad I live where I do. We have a shot now. Good luck to people who have more lackadaisical leaders. God help you if they believe Trump and want to demonstrate their cavalier attitude. Stay home yourself and sauve qui peut. And have pity on the ones who’ll die because we chose poorly in 2016.
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There are so many models they could be looking at and learning from. But they’re not.
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