I can't be the only one concerned about COVID-19

I think NYC is the most dense populous in America? The mayor really dropped the ball when he said to live life normally. I hope the 200k is a gross overestimate. Hopefully doctors can find a drug cocktail that will easy the respiratory part.

 

What a perfect job for you!

 

Everyone is trying to figure it out as they go. I work in the software space, healthcare staffing as it happens. It's crazy whats going on right now. Hospitals are reacting daily and trying to ramp up on contingent workers. You have others workers displaced due to electective surgery pause, and then you have others who don't want to work without adequate protective gear, so they are sitting on the sidelines.

So how does this relate to the death numbers, simple, you have a skilled healthcare worker shortage building right now, that this virus has amplified. The amount of money being thrown at healthcare workers right now to attract them to infected areas is staggering and they still can't get people. So not only do we have a potential for infection rates spiking that will outpace available beds, you won't have enough healthcare workers to staff the areas that have space, which can cause a skew to the death rates.

I'm telling you from sitting on the inside, the supply chain side is scared as hell what a US spike in infection will mean for the hospital and care providers. It's not necessarily about the virus's effect on your health concerning people now as it is about ability in finding resources to getting people treated and cured. TeleMedicine is exploding in a way never expected. This virus is going to reshape a lot of business 12 months down the line.

 

Question. Are there alot of specialized medicine doctors out there that are sitting by the sidelines? It may have been a while since med school, but would they be qualified to work in other parts? If this is a "war" should we or could we order them on the front lines?

 

So my family works in health care and specialized doctors are being instructed that they can be moved into general medicine if needed. However, most specialized doctors run at pretty high utilization (meaning their regular patient load keeps them busy). Certainly they can be asked to work extra hours, but the main challenge as a whole is going to be the fact the US healthcare system as a whole runs at a high utilization / efficiency. So a massive spikes in cases can overwhelm the system.

 

For most medical specialists, our volume is way down.

All elective procedures and non urgent clinic visits are canceled for two months (at least).

I only have emergency cases and visits, which is about 20 percent of normal.

So I would have plenty of time to volunteer in other areas, although I would not be very useful in treating your heart attack or casting your broken arm. But at some point I probably will be asked to help take care of the non critical inpatients in the hospital, so that the hospitalists can take care of the more critical patients. Our hospital has already scheduled this backup staffing for when the front line doctors get sick...

 

Yeah, my family is in hemato-oncology, where the volume hasn't changed at all, for obvious reasons. So I guess it varies a lot by specialty.

 

CDC considering recommending general public wear face coverings in public
https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...3e495c-7280-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html

I personally believe masks can save lives, not only in just protecting ourselves, more importantly to slow down the spread of COVID-19. It wasn't recommended simply because we didn't have enough mask to go around. There are many DIY YouTube videos on face mask. Material is hard to find and might be expensive, but not impossible, A doctor recommended using HIPA filter which is even better than n95, I am sure some of you might have watched it. I have not gone out in more than 2 weeks except going to McDonald drive thru a couple of times, but my son wears a mask when he goes out to buy grocery. Any body have an opinion on this?

 

Is this a joke or it really happened?

https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/crowds-ignore-social-distancing-rules-to-watch-usns-comfort/

 

Yeah, its people like that slowing down our progress in controlling the spread of COVID-19. We still have teens and children playing in our park, I don't know what the parents are thinking. I guess too many people still don't think it is a real problem.

 

There is a shortage of masks, but a diy mask is better than nothing. Why didnt they ask people to do this instead. Who knows what the transmission rate would be if we all started when around others.

 

The yeah was enough. Hoped was a joke!

 

How are things going over in Italy @TonyFatFingers ?

 

Here's another thing to play with for the US. There's a drop down for every state. Just be aware the values on the y axis vary from chart to chart if you're doing comparisons

https://covid19.healthdata.org/?fbclid=IwAR3zs7WP5K9fCvlSEHfrgOpDlpwA8suvehL997_tocwAFqIN1Y6gy6ZMybM'

 

Thanks. Useful

 

I wonder if NY will be able to ship patients to states that have capacity because ...the numbers are bad.

 

The local public health authority in my area is being pretty specific about this stuff (which is awesome):
https://www.hpph.ca/en/news/coronavirus-covid19-update.aspx#COVID-19-in-Huron-and-Perth

Combined population is about 100,000 residents in a mostly rural environment. First confirmed case back on March 14 (he died on the weekend, unfortunately). Total confirmed cases including the death is 14 in just over two weeks. Even with 33 pending results, and even with assuming several non-symptomatic people around here have it, those numbers are incredibly minuscule given the mitigation efforts. And I know it's because of the mitigation efforts that the numbers are minuscule. But if there's 1 or 2 more confirmed cases per day for the next few days / weeks / months is it truly worth these restrictions in the long term? It's also crazy that of 257 tests, 210 came back negative - and we're only testing sick people.

 

My hometown in north central Montana now has 3 deaths, but only showing 2 so far on the Johns Hopkins page. County population is under 5000. First cases were diagnosed around a week ago, but I assume initial exposure was before that.

If you assume a similar rate for the 330M people that are in the US, that is 198,000.