Medical Discussion of Coronavirus

[nephron]

Has anybody else tried to tell patients and their family members not to let covid "dominate" their lives? It doesn't go as well as I would have expected when they are in the ICU. Even more awkward when they have already lost someone to the disease.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/politics/trump-leaves-hospital-coronavirus.html

[CordMcNally]

Has anybody else tried to tell patients and their family members not to let covid "dominate" their lives? It doesn't go as well as I would have expected when they are in the ICU. Even more awkward when they have already lost someone to the disease.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/u...ronavirus.html

Really? You could say this for any disease, infectious or not, rare or common. I think that's a reasonable blanket statement for something that has not killed 99.94% of the US population with a 97.2% survival rate (which is likely artificially low since there is a high chance there are much, much more unconfirmed cases than unconfirmed deaths) that heavily skews towards certain populations. You'll notice he did not say to not be vigilant, use caution, etc. I use the same reasoning behind driving and MVC deaths.

[fatlittlepig]

Really? You could say this for any disease, infectious or not, rare or common. I think that's a reasonable blanket statement for something that has not killed 99.94% of the US population with a 97.2% survival rate (which is likely artificially low since there is a high chance there are much, much more unconfirmed cases than unconfirmed deaths) that heavily skews towards certain populations. You'll notice he did not say to not be vigilant, use caution, etc.

The survival rate is much higher than 97.2% I believe the mortality rate of sarscov2 is between 0.4-0.6% (?)
the 0.4-0.6% mortality rate is for all comers amongst all age groups therefore if you are looking only at the younger population the mortality is even much lower.

[StarTrekDoc]

CDC Annual Mortality stats in the US:

Can slot COVID into the #3 this year. Won't catch up to #1-2 unless people go crazy mad.

To minimize its impact on all of our lives and not let it dominate the conversation beyond #1-2 causes of death.....not the best preventative advice if you're giving it during a medical visit.



https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lea...s-of-death.htm

• Heart disease: 647,457
• Cancer: 599,108
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
• Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
• Diabetes: 83,564
• Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,633
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

[CordMcNally]

The survival rate is much higher than 97.2% I believe the mortality rate of sarscov2 is between 0.4-0.6% (?)

I agree with you but I was just using the total confirmed cases divided by deaths.

[Zaphod]

He was clearly using accessory muscles to breath, the optics were terrible and should have kept mask on. However, that is entirely explainable due to idiot move of walking up the stairs with covid, 74, and obese.

[FIREshrink]

He was clearly using accessory muscles to breath, the optics were terrible and should have kept mask on. However, that is entirely explainable due to idiot move of walking up the stairs with covid, 74, and obese.

Link to video?

[Dusn]

I can’t believe people are still minimizing covid. Our treatments have improved. But this winter is still going to be brutal.

[fatlittlepig]

Im a believer in masks as I suspect most of us are, but how good is the data/science behind masking other than the observation that countries with near universal masking have done well. Too lazy to research this myself.

[CordMcNally]

I can’t believe people are still minimizing covid. Our treatments have improved. But this winter is still going to be brutal.

Can you point out specific examples of people minimizing COVID?

[G]

Can you point out specific examples of people minimizing COVID?

"Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!"

[StarTrekDoc]

Im a believer in masks as I suspect most of us are, but how good is the data/science behind masking other than the observation that countries with near universal masking have done well. Too lazy to research this myself.

Probably would be unethical to do a direct study -- at least no IRB in US would approve of such a study comparison.

Can use places with known COVID+ disease like hospitals/ED and simple universal masking reflecting low transmissions despite known covid and compare to several well studied cases of unmasked COVID+ spread other unmasked folk. The recent outbreak at the White House will be a future case study of unmasked spread.

[Bmac]

"Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!"

And, mic drop.

[Jaqen Haghar MD]

We have a pretty high number of Covid cases locally and everybody in our ED group saw tons of Covid patients day after day, and week after week, for a long time. I don’t think we really take extraordinary precautions. Just a used N95, gloves and weedwacker goggles, maybe a loose gown when it was expected they had it. I usually wear the N95 until the rubber strap breaks spontaneously after awhile.

So far, we have had just a couple of people in our group get it, and it was like a mild cold for them. Everyone was tested including antibodies over the summer.

Even an old, overused N95 seems to work well for protection. Not sure about simple surgical or old rags though. And to say I’ve personally seen 500 Covid patients would not be an exaggeration, though saying I’ve seen 1,000 probably would be. I’m not really sure anymore.

That being said, do I think that Covid risk is over-exaggerated by the media and most politicians? ....Yes, I believe it is.

Do I believe there is no risk from Covid? ....of course not.

It seems that our handling of the pandemic is mostly emotional and fear-based, rather than logical and practical. We cannot emerge from it unscathed as some would have you believe.

We have to choose between to evils, the virus itself vs. total lockdown and the subsequent severe costs, and that choice is more than many can emotionally handle during these modern, protected times.

I don’t believe that you should sacrifice the future and security of the younger generation, to avoid every single case.

[Zaphod]

We have a pretty high number of Covid cases locally and everybody in our ED group saw tons of Covid patients day after day, and week after week, for a long time. I don’t think we really take extraordinary precautions. Just a used N95, gloves and weedwacker goggles, maybe a loose gown when it was expected they had it. I usually wear the N95 until the rubber strap breaks spontaneously after awhile.

So far, we have had just a couple of people in our group get it, and it was like a mild cold for them. Everyone was tested including antibodies over the summer.

Even an old, overused N95 seems to work well for protection. Not sure about simple surgical or old rags though. And to say I’ve personally seen 500 Covid patients would not be an exaggeration, though saying I’ve seen 1,000 probably would be. I’m not really sure anymore.

That being said, do I think that Covid risk is over-exaggerated by the media and most politicians? ....Yes, I believe it is.

Do I believe there is no risk from Covid? ....of course not.

It seems that our handling of the pandemic is mostly emotional and fear-based, rather than logical and practical. We cannot emerge from it unscathed as some would have you believe.

We have to choose between to evils, the virus itself vs. total lockdown and the subsequent severe costs, and that choice is more than many can emotionally handle during these modern, protected times.

I don’t believe that you should sacrifice the future and security of the younger generation, to avoid every single case.

We in no way have only those two choices, that is the fear based political options. We could have instead been smart about it and closed targeted super spreading areas, bars/indoor eating/concerts/etc...and focused on school/work.

Universal all the time masking works, from logic and in practice at hospitals with these pts. Ventilation obviously works, for a small price increase in electricity usage we could have cranked the air turnover in buildings to a much better level, decreasing risks greatly. They should have retrofit and equipped schools to handle that back in spring.

The only reason we're struggling is the patchwork way its being handled and the large contingent of people that absolutely refuse to do anything, and the intermixing of all risk groups, etc...

Universities being back is actually a lower risk way to get some immunity for a population, as long as they dont send them home.

It is 100% manageable, but we dont have any single central level of control that cares. Could have taken war powers for PPE, for all kinds of stuff, and this would be entirely different and economy would be at 95% and they could have cheaply supported the rest of it.