A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure from Covid-19
propublica.org
propublica.org
Some of the remedies which are being proposed for the pandemic would have human costs demonstrably higher than the virus itself.
I have seen more and more smart people adopting black and white attitudes that this is humanity's only risk, while numerically it is merely comparable to several other risks American's embrace daily including driving and gun violence.
My only wish is that policymakers set scientific priorities. Shutdown cruise ships and airplanes before schools. Manufacture tests and bailout individuals before worrying about banks etc.
I would also be very interested to learn what affected persons do speculate about exactly where and how they could have been infected. Currently, most reports only state that the patient has "spent time in an affected country", which is rather unclear. The objective of asking this would be to learn how exactly the infection is spreading.
> “It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube.” [...]
> “Reading about it in the news, I knew it was going to be bad, but we deal with the flu every year so I was thinking: Well, it’s probably not that much worse than the flu. But seeing patients with COVID-19 completely changed my perspective, and it’s a lot more frightening.”
> “I have patients in their early 40s and, yeah, I was kind of shocked. I’m seeing people who look relatively healthy with a minimal health history, and they are completely wiped out, like they’ve been hit by a truck. This is knocking out what should be perfectly fit, healthy people. Patients will be on minimal support, on a little bit of oxygen, and then all of a sudden, they go into complete respiratory arrest, shut down and can’t breathe at all.”
Edit: removed a double negative in the introductory sentence.