Covid Notes from an Intensivist in the Seattle | Hacker News Reader

Covid Notes from an Intensivist in the Seattle

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33 pointsrcpt9 comments

there is an unsubstantiated , unsourced twitter and facebook thread circulating.

the language and abbreviations here look legit, but it doesnt say anything gamechanging in any way except that most deaths were not asphyxiation due to lung failure but were due to heart failure, this is to be expected as hypoxia [low oxygen level] is straining to the heart, and the heart is one of the secondary trophic targets[a place the virus goes to replicate] of the virus.

in summary this says nothing new or unexpected, or particularily conspiratorial.

Can anyone give a layman's summary of this? Too many technical terms and short-hands in the post itself and it would be useful info to if one is a patient undergoing treatment.

If you ignore the medical technicalities which seem primarily intended for other doctors, the tl;dr is that social distancing ASAP is vital, and being young and healthy isn't a guarantee that you won't get very sick or die. Don't panic, but take it seriously.

I find these two posts from Italy more readable: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/ff8hns/testimony_... https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...

IANAD but there are some nuggets to pull out: 1) They're seeing young (20's) patients w/o prior medical conditions show up 2) China used CT extensively to diagnose Covid-19 patients. This doc is pointing out its harder to that w/o contaminating everything 3) many are dying of cardiac arrest rather than inability to ventilate/oxygenate 4) lots of patients get sent to the ICU, seem to do better on "flolan" then die of cardiac arrest 5) seem to suggest that patients do well on Remdesivir (experimental anti-viral) but its hard to get a hold of

>lots of patients get sent to the ICU, seem to do better on "flolan" then die of cardiac arrest

Didnt doctors in Wuhan discover the same thing? Why is Italy repeating this mistake?

The clinical notes are interesting but with a sample of 21 patients and 11 deaths, is the Law of Small Numbers not in play?

Based on the title, I thought the notes would be more something like this: "Internet Book of Critical Care (IBCC): COVID-19" https://emcrit.org/ibcc/covid19/

Interesting but a lot of medical jargon. It would be very interesting to see this translated into "plain English."

“Stay at home or risk death from heart failure after 1-2 weeks of hospitalization” is a succinct summary that sets aside medical specifics for plain-English advice.

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