I’m interested in ongoing reports on whether hospitals are overwhelmed.
Also interested about elective surgeries and other non-COVID areas of health care getting going again.
If you do report, please mention your state or city.
Thanks in advance.
Gov Reeves of MS was on a talk show today and seemed to say they’ve researched the “spike” and found that it was an anomaly, not a trend. (testing backlog? I think he said?) I wasn’t paying close enough attention to tell whether he’s moving forward with reopening now or waiting a bit longer to be sure, but I think it’s good that he was willing to pause and do the research.
I do know that MS has had very low hospitalizations and deaths, in general, and their hospitals are not overwhelmed. So, yes, they do need to stay on top of the numbers, and be willing to react, but I’m not sure they really need to wait for a 14 day decline from already very low numbers.
What is scary about this virus is 1) it is extremely contagious, 2) there is no cure yet (whereas most of illness listed above have some sort of cure), 3) it effects people differently (some people get very sick and some have no symptoms). It’s like Russian roulette.
If I knew I was going to be one those people who would get bad headache, fever, cough, body ache and recover in 2 weeks then I would be more inclined not to worry. On the other hand, if I could be one of those who ends up on a ventilator and possibly die by myself then I am not so inclined to take a chance. I am lucky that I could stay in for as long as I want to and I am going to take advantage of it.
@Private banker, We have effective treatments to many you listed (and preventative vaccines or medications given when traveling to countries with malaria, for example.) We also have a sanitation system in this country ( and every developed country) which prevents some of those from happening here.
We know what measures need to be taken to prevent HIV, also. Plus, people don’t get AIDS by being in a group of people talking or sharing an experience (like going to a religious service, for example.)
We also have vaccines - especially for the flu and which affords our population the necessary herd immunity that keeps the yearly flu viruses from becoming a pandemic killing millions.
Hospitals are not overwhelmed where I am in PA nor where med school lad goes to school in Western NY. “Needed” elective surgeries should (IMO) be allowed at both. I believe they start soon where my lad goes. I’m not positive about locally since I’m in a still shut down county (NW PA will be partially opening Friday). Golf courses state wide have opened though - perhaps elective surgeries have too?
I believe I recall our governor saying hospitals in PA are doing fine across the board, but others can answer for sure in their area, esp when it comes to PPE, because that’s where things might differ. Here it’s fine at this point. We’re rural, so it wouldn’t take much for that to switch.
Doctors I know or know of in both places who deal with Covid think things are opening too soon and it’s a mistake. They see too many of the side effects lingering. Their thoughts and reading about some of those things myself has definitely colored my views.
Regarding the weather: Here in SoCal we had a very wet and chilly March and April. An unusual pattern. February was hot and dry. The rain likely kept more people indoors and may have contributed to increasing contacts between infected persons in the same household.
I went to the grocery store and can offer a South Texas update.
First, our governor says Texas is opening up, but if you read his orders, it is not as big an opening as he says. Second, our mayor and county judge are slowing his roll, cautioning people that we have not yet peaked and so to keep on distancing.
We ordered delivery from a nice, fancy place the other night and the owner delivered the food himself in his Mercedes. He had posted on FB and his website that he could not afford to open up at the 25% capacity required under the governor’s order, so was going to continue with carry out/delivery only. His restaurant is much loved and he got a rush of reservations, but he said please wait a little longer.
My neighborhood is the same. More people are out running, walking, riding bikes, and generally recreating. We have plenty of space, so no masks for outdoor exercise in the 'hood. I see signs in the yards of HS seniors announcing their status. I saw a new pair of older men on beach bikes out just riding around this morning.
H and I debated scheduling a curbside pick up and missed our chance to snag one so I went to the store in person for the first time in about two weeks (? time is a blur). The same basic set up: one place to enter and another exit, cashiers and sackers behind plexiglass. Aisles are not one way. Everyone and I mean everyone, customers and workers alike, had on masks in the store. That was a change and an interesting one given our gov said we are opening up. Shelves were well stocked and I saw paper products, cleaning products, eggs. Meat is the new rationed item but we didn’t need any so I didn’t buy any. The quantity of a certain local ice cream was dangerously low; are people eating ice cream now that the weather is getting warm?
@emilybee thank god we have vaccines and treatments. I can’t imagine the numbers without them.
But it doesn’t seem to keep these long standing diseases from so much death year in and year out.
Maybe it’s just institutionalized at this point and since covid 19 is novel it is especially scary.
My only point was the Vietnam analogy is not consistently applied to consistent and ongoing public health problems that are of a greater scale statistically.
It seems to be a talking point for non public health purposes, I’m not suggesting this re your post, it’s been a talking point embedded into questions by the media and has been mainstreamed. It’s just my opinion.
The hospital where D works (an eastern college town) has just 20 COVID patients in a 300 bed hospital. That number has held steady over many weeks.
Hmmm…when I was sick with C19, my appetite was very poor. When I started to feel better, all I wanted was ice cream or frozen yogurt!
This is going to be rambling but stick with me.
I’ve been enjoying watching the weekly Grand Rounds from University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. They’re aimed, as the name suggests, at doctors, but interested laypeople can learn a lot.
This week’s edition featured an infectious disease specialist talking about this week’s developments in clinical manifestations of covid (an amazing amount of new information just this week!), a neurologist talking about neurological manifestations of covid (strokes in young people, ooh scary), and a specialist in HIV talking about the contact tracing program UCSF is setting up (“shoe leather epidemiology,” not apps; contact tracers spend a lot of time on the phone, first with the diagnosed patient, then with the contacts they reveal, then with the contacts they reveal).
San Francisco, happily, has not been overwhelmed with covid patients. But New York has. So the next speaker, some high administrator from Columbia Presbyterian Queens proffered a dry, almost hilariously dry recitation of the scene at his hospital. In a droning tone, he offhandedly talked about how he had to set up an auxiliary ICU with patients on ventilators, staffed by doctors who don’t have expertise in ICU. Normally each ventilator has its own nurse who is an expert in handling these critically ill patients, but this auxiliary had general nurses who were not experts, and definitely not one per patient. That counts as overwhelmed in my book.
This administrator had to be prompted for some of the information we would think was important and dramatic. “Didn’t some of your colleagues die?” “Didn’t you yourself get covid, and return to work while still on oxygen?”
Unlike most of the rest of the US, New York is clearly on the downslope. Their death rate is less than half of what it was on the worst day. And yet, they’re still what I would term overwhelmed. The next speaker was one of a cohort of doctors who traveled from UCSF to Columbia Presbyterian Queens to help out the hospital. He talked about the group of patients he was handling, not in an intensive care unit, including people on ventilators. Having arrived after the worst was over, he described a situation that is still very bad: in non-overwhelmed situations, people in ventilators are in ICUs, not in general acute care wards supervised by young inexperienced (albeit brave, smart and hardworking) doctors who just arrived at the hospital a day ago. He described a cadre of health care professionals persevering and succeeding in an almost unimaginably bad situation. “… the strength to go into work, day after day, when it kept getting worse, and worse, and it was already the worst you could have imagined or not even imagined, I think that strength and dedication is really remarkable…”
Here’s the Grand Rounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_ZsrlGtqfk&feature=youtu.be
The next stories of overwhelmed hospitals are going to be rural areas.
I posted this in the other thread, but Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit was one of the hot spots. I’ve been watching their case count (on their website since mid-March). Then they had 400 plus patients. As of May 2, they have 103. This in a 877 bed hospital.
I’ve been surprised, and actually alarmed, to hear all the accounts here of the lack of social distancing/mask wearing in other areas. In my area, San Francisco, just about everyone wears a mask, even when just walking down an uncrowded street, although some like me, take them off if there is no one in sight. It is unusual to not have people give each other a wide berth when passing on the street. Standing in line requires 6 feet of distance, which for most stores, is marked on the sidewalk. In grocery stores and restaurant takeout, masks are required, and most also wear gloves. No one is really complaining either. Yes, there are exceptions, but this is the norm.
Yikes - just did a curbside pickup at Target. Absolutely mobbed, as was the Lowe’s nextdoor. The worst I’ve seen it. Local parks and trails I drove by - insanity. Very little social distancing, few masks. The closed tennis courts - full, with people waiting. I am in a very hard hit area - we are not even close to being able to open up. I just don’t get it.
Well, temps have already reached 100 here in AZ and are forecasted to climb to 105 by Wednesday. Our cases and deaths are still climbing in almost every county. Unlike other places that are getting warmer and beckoning people outside, we’re quickly reaching the point where everyone goes back inside. We’re moving into our annual three-month hibernation period, doors and windows sealed, A/C cranked. It will be interesting to watch our stats over the next few months.
In Illinois, no county is overwhelmed with hospitalizations. There are enough ICU beds and ventilators. A large off-site hospital facility was setup at McCormick Place (a large convention center) in Chicago…it is being dismantled now.
We can begin elective surgeries, based on certain criteria, on May 11.
Because a large part of the population has been told that this is no big deal and essentially a hoax.
You have people protesting to reopen so they can get their hair done. These seem to be people from non hot spots who haven’t really been affected. That will change.
It’s unfortunate that people aren’t demanding change but it’s what happens when we’re ruled by a minority and something like 1/3 of our population is in a different reality than the rest of us thanks to their news sources.
As someone born in NYC who has lived here for virtually my entire adult life, I have been waiting to comment on NYC-related posts here until I catch up, but I guess I never will. @roycroftmom NYC subways were not and are not filthy. NYC public hospitals were not a disaster before the pandemic. I find it hard to believe that you think they were. What gave you that idea?
In NYC, public transportation is the great equalizer and it is what I worry about the most, since I can’t figure out a solution for the need to socially distance that will get a significant portion of the population to work and school. Right now trains are almost empty (ridership down 90+ percent) and those who have to take the train can do so as long as they have the flexibilty to wait for an emptier train if one arrives crowded. I don’t know how the crowded trains that will result from opening up will allow people to be safe. I am sure the public health experts here are working on it!
Out of curiosity, what would you consider chilly? Here in MA, the highest high temp we got in the entire month of April was 62. Most days were much cooler than that, and also wet. It was depressing, actually. Just curious what “chilly” is in SoCal.