This is an emergency.
If you haven’t been keeping up, here is a good concise summary of the virus situation – a 17 minute summary of the situation from Capt. Samuel Philbrick, an Air Force flight surgeon (doctor) in Anchorage. It covers the statistics of how this is going to overwhelm hospitals where it gets out of control. (Email readers, click the headline to come online.)
I’m spending about half my waking hours absorbing coverage of the virus. It does not look good for America, and we need to CLAMP DOWN SERIOUSLY on people connecting with others. (Sure, the President called for us to rethink our lockdowns … shortly after he learned that 6 of his top 7 hotels have to shut down.)
To repeat that: ANYONE WHO THINKS THIS IS A HOAX OR IT WON’T BE SERIOUS IS IGNORANT and is dangerous. (This video doesn’t mention the lack of protective equipment that is already killing some unprotected care providers, nor the crushing tension of going to work in such a place day after day.)
But if we FLATTEN THE CURVE by distancing, and SLOW IT DOWN, the case load will have a shot at being closer to hospital capacity.
Want more data?
If you have an appetite for tons of analysis underlying the numbers, start the hour-long two-part series here. A major reason we need to clamp down (STAY HOME – if you go out, DON’T CONGREGATE) is that our hospital systems will be overwhelmed by having WAY too many COVID-19 patients for the number of ICU beds, which means they could have been saved but they’ll suffocate from pneumonia because there were way too few beds and ventilators.
This excerpt from that post shows why crushing the system doesn’t just mean virus patients will die – what if you need a hospital for a more normal reason?
“What happens if you have a heart attack but the ambulance takes 50 minutes to come instead of 8 (too many coronavirus cases) and once you arrive, there’s no ICU and no doctor available? You die.”
Consider too that those ambulance drivers and EMTs won’t have the luxury of social distancing: they’ll be contacting virus patients all day long. This Italian doctor had to work without gloves – he’s dead.
This isn’t a joke, and it’s urgent that even if people don’t want to hear it, they need to at least know about it. STAY HOME as much as you can. STOP THE SPREAD. FLATTEN THE CURVE.
This is an emergency.
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