What medical facilities should be doing is advising patients who may have the virus to stay home unless they are beginning to have life threatening symptoms or symptoms that are likely to lead there. There is nothing we can do about it in the outpatient setting. We have no medication to slow the infection or defeat it. If a patient has asthma and they begin to wheeze most patients already have the medication they need at home. If they are having respiratory distress beyond the ordinary they will potentially need hospitalization. Going to the doctor's office or an urgent care center just infects a lot of other people.
Today, my office was flooded with kids with mild cold symptoms whose parents thought they might have Covid-19. Absolutely nothing I can do about it one way or another. Under normal circumstances most of these kids would have stayed at home.
Doctors are not being cavalier about this. But we're all exposed to life threatening infections and we know it is part of the job. It's part of staying calm and doing our jobs when you don't see us overreacting. I have a 3-5% chance of dying this year instead of the usual 1% that 63 year olds have. Not a good thing but I do have a job to do so I'm going to do it. In the back of your mind you know you could catch something deadly when you sign on for this career, but we're more likely to die of suicide than an infectious disease.
This not "just another flu." It's not an influenza virus at all. The death rate for Influenza is about 1/20 of the death rate for Covid-19 across all age groups except for the under 10 year old group where Influenza appears to be much more deadly 34,000 people died from Influenza in the USA last year. Since we seem unwilling to clamp down on commercial activity like the Chinese did, we're likely to see a lot more deaths than that from C-19.
Ha! Good one.
Today, my office was flooded with kids with mild cold symptoms whose parents thought they might have Covid-19. Absolutely nothing I can do about it one way or another. Under normal circumstances most of these kids would have stayed at home.
Doctors are not being cavalier about this. But we're all exposed to life threatening infections and we know it is part of the job. It's part of staying calm and doing our jobs when you don't see us overreacting. I have a 3-5% chance of dying this year instead of the usual 1% that 63 year olds have. Not a good thing but I do have a job to do so I'm going to do it. In the back of your mind you know you could catch something deadly when you sign on for this career, but we're more likely to die of suicide than an infectious disease.
This not "just another flu." It's not an influenza virus at all. The death rate for Influenza is about 1/20 of the death rate for Covid-19 across all age groups except for the under 10 year old group where Influenza appears to be much more deadly 34,000 people died from Influenza in the USA last year. Since we seem unwilling to clamp down on commercial activity like the Chinese did, we're likely to see a lot more deaths than that from C-19.
(03-05-2020, 11:57 PM)76lsjumb Wrote:(03-05-2020, 04:23 PM)Snorlax94 Wrote: It would have been helpful if the federal government Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hadn't made so many statements supporting the anti-vaxxer movement these past few years.
There... fixed it for you.
Ha! Good one.