Hmm I wonder what hospital the patient is at. According to the email sent to the uchicago community from the provost, she's not at uchicago medical. I would guess northwestern or rush.
What can the hospital even do to help you with this?
I don't know why this kind of 'American stereotyping' is okay.
That aside, myself and my family ('Americans' in 'America') have physicians that we call when we have issues.
That physician is generally the one to tell us what to do.
Our situation isn't abnormal or unusual, either.
Everywhere I've lived the family doctor should be first contact but everyone seems to get sick at 5:30pm on Friday...
Number of visits: 145.6 million
Number of injury-related visits: 42.2 million
Number of visits per 100 persons: 45.8
Number of emergency department visits resulting in hospital admission: 12.6 million
Number of emergency department visits resulting in admission to critical care unit: 2.2 million
[0]
If you're not familiar with Americans going to ERs "just to be safe" for the most frivolous reasons, because their insurance will pay for it, we're not living in the same country.
With that sort of attitude being prevalent, it's easy to see how someone would go directly to the ER and spread something like this without giving it any thought.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency-department.htm
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/study-71-...
There's blame for that, but for many people with non-critical conditions in the ER, it's a rational choice.
1. Identify infections quickly and isolate those patients as soon as possible
2. Aggressively trace and monitor anyone in contact with those patients, including hospital staff
3. Set a very low threshold for quarantine of any person suspected of infection
Thankfully the various governments involved seem to have already started running this playbook. There's also a fairly loud public education campaign[2] underway to make sure people know what to do (call the doctor, tell them what's happening, and follow their instructions) if they show symptoms.
Note: I'm not a doctor or epidemiologist, but I split my time between Hong Kong and Singapore so I've followed this situation relatively closely.
1. https://www.who.int/csr/sars/conference/june_2003/materials/...
In terms of what a hospital can do - if you get severe viral pneumonia, intensive care and supportive therapy is about all that can be done.