Articles I’ve seen have said we have X number of them and Y number are already in use for Z - meaning we need more than X-Y to have enough for Covid patients.
Same with ICU beds. Same with doctors, nurses, masks, and oh, everything else.
The one area most places have cut back on to help is ditching everything elective including surgeries, some appts, chemo, medical students, and others who shadow since those use up part of the baseline. How much is truly elective (like chemo) is… well, fill in the blank with the word of choice.
Yes, thank goodness this is generic drug and a lot of companies making it, mine included. But we have a shortage and couldn’t meet the demand. Our supply chain leader said something like…if only the shortage was due to live savings as it was said. It would be a thousand times worth it…
My niece is an RN working in a major hospital in a large metropolitan area. She is working on the COVID-19 ward.
They had to lock up their supplies of N-95 masks and other PPEs because workers in other parts of the hospital were taking them from those who need them most!.
She says that for now they have adequate supplies. They found some older models N-95 in a hospital supply cabinet.
Hope is not science. Personally, I HOPE that it will work, but so far, the SCIENCE Is not promising.
The combo is being used because in most case, it “doesn’t hurt to try.” When there are no proven treatments, doctors are willing to try anything.
Didier Raoult does have a reputation as a self-promoting semi-sleazoid in the anti-infective world. That’s not to say he’s wrong about this treatment, but… those falsified publications are pretty sleazy.
@creekland. My comments refer to this post. They made a reference to the use of drugs inordinately for the Coronavirus cases. My point is that it’s not the only thing being used in that manner. Ventilators as an example.
What is possibly wrong in my accurate and short statement ?
My daughter, who is not a nurse or doctor, works on a non-COVID hospital ward in close contact with medically fragile patients. Everyone working on the ward is now wearing masks, I believe to protect patients from possible infection from staff who need to return home each day. They’re all minimizing exposure as much as possible, but if COVID were to reach this ward they’d be in a world of hurt.
Remember that there are people working with immunocompromised patients on cancer wards, performing life-saving surgeries, taking blood draws, and doing other work that requires protective gear.
The true test is what happens in China as they start to lift restrictions and people start moving around again. That will give a good idea of what the subsequent waves of infection will look like.
Another reason Trump should have taken action in late Dec/early Jan to try to do whatever it took to boost the national supply of them (should have done so earlier in the presidency since experts warned we were not prepared with enough for a pandemic). I don’t think this is a good analogy, though, because they are not going to take people off ventilators who are on them to live and give them to a covid-19 patient, but they are preventing access for some on this medication right now.
In that case, it’s what a pp posted. Ventilators are proven to work. If there aren’t enough of them some folks are going to have to make hard decisions. The drugs are iffy at best. If the drugs are ever proven to work, then hard decisions need to be made for them too, but with iffy data those who definitely benefit from them should have first dibs.
Well, China is already starting by looking around, seeing the bulk of the rest of the world not enforcing their quarantines enough to be effective, and closing their borders to them. They don’t want it back. Can’t blame them.
I wish other people/countries could learn from what happened there.
I personally do not think the game is over and the ultimate success of the many efforts is yet to be determined.
Positives for me - testing ramp up, low death rate than feared so far, some lowering of higher end projections of death potential, economic measures, focus of everyone and the seriousness of most of the general population.
As CC tos allow for a welcoming environment and not a debating society. Please don’t waste energy disagreeing. We all have different opinions. Let’s leave it at that please.
"Another reason Trump should have taken action in late Dec/early Jan to try to do whatever it took to boost the national supply of them (should have done so earlier in the presidency since experts warned we were not prepared with enough for a pandemic). I don’t think this is a good analogy, though, because they are not going to take people off ventilators who are on them to live and give them to a covid-19 patient, but they are preventing access for some on this medication right now. "
Heck, all of this, I mean all of this could have been avoided if he’d had the cojones to shut down all incoming international arrivals when this epidemic first began. Air, land and sea. All of this came from overseas travel. All of it! We could have been Fortress America, sending help to the rest of the world. We wouldn’t have full hospitals. Wouldn’t need all these ventilators and PPE. People would not be losing their jobs and businesses.
From today’s JHU Center for Health Security newsletter:
TREATMENT USING COVID-19 ANTIBODIES Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City recently announced that researchers would begin the process of transferring antibodies from people who have recovered from COVID-19 to critically ill COVID-19 patients. The Icahn School of Medicine had reported that they are working on a diagnostic test for COVID-19 that detects antibodies in sick and recovered individuals, rather than genomic information. Media reports suggest that researchers have begun to contact recovered COVID-19 patients in an effort to receive plasma donations.
519 deaths (+134)
6,481 currently hospitalized
1,583 ICU patients (+290)
2,045 patients discharged from hospital (+528)
NYC 25,398 (+4,005) - [look at the number of tested, not enough for NYC]
Westchester 7,187 (+1,243)
Nassau 4,657 (+743)
Suffolk 3,385 (+650)
Rockland 1,457 (+260)
Orange 910 (+159)
@Nhatrang honestly I don’t think you are following the logic or the original post.
There is a limited supply of x.
There are multiple uses for x.
There an emergency need for x in a natural disaster.
The resources get strained in the amount of x to serve both the normal usage and emergency needs.
If x is a ventilator and you are in a serious accident. If you are like my wife with a serious lung ailment and could easily need one to survive. If there are other medical needs.
What’s so tough to understand. Who compared the actual uses of these medical interventions. Not me. I’m talking about scarcity and emergency pressure on those resources.
Well, China is already starting by looking around, seeing the bulk of the rest of the world not enforcing their quarantines enough to be effective, and closing their borders to them. They don’t want it back. Can’t blame them.
I wish other people/countries could learn from what happened there.
[/quote]
China is not playing around. Watch this video of what they do with people coming from overseas. You will see why seeing what happens in China won’t tell us what will happen here, which is that we are not taking this seriously enough or doing nearly as much as they are to prevent it from impacting our country.
