Corona Virus

With the benefit of hindsight........always easy with hindsight......I got the impression that nobody really knew what to do and possibly panicked, expecting an onslaught of cases and an onslaught of bad press. Look at the virtually unused new 'hospitals'. Perhaps all those discharged to care homes should have been kept under quarantine in the new tented hospitals first and discharged to care homes when proven clear of the virus? The tented hospitals should then have gone on to have become Covid specialist centres and the general hospitals left to deal with standard in/out patients (or vice versa)? There have been some bizarre decisions (such as not testing all coming back into the country at one point) but (possibly naively) believing this due to scientific advice which said something like either (a) the tests are not reliable enough to prove anything (b) those found positive will be found impossible to police for 14 days quarantine and so the testing will be ineffective in any case or (c) some other unstated reason. I think sometimes, these days, we look too hard for someone/something to blame instead of accepting as we did in pre litigious society that upon occasion there are incidences of bad luck, outside anyone's control and we individually or collectively have to take that on the chin and move onwards. Seems to me that the media has overplayed this thing by some considerable margin when compared to cataclysmic events that we should take note of from our history.

 

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Double post

 

https://starctmag.com/news/malaysia...-with-coronavirus-mutation-report-15698-2020/

 

Hummm - So the flu vacine has to be re-developed on a regular basis, and can apparently be hit and miss: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-selection.htm ...but the new Covid-19 virus that they know f#ck all about in comparison, and is already mutating, well that's ok you will still get your dodgy vacine

 

At the end of the day, nobody has got a clue. They are all guessing and grasping at straws.

 

My wife sent me this - it was on bacefook or somesuch soshal meedja thing that I don't access or use.

It was recently posted, apparently, by a serving nurse working with ventilated covid patients. May or may not be accurate but, frankly, I've no wish to verify or otherwise the veracity of the images or the description ......... especially not by experience.

So, do ya feel lucky?





Posted by a nurse who works with ventilators:

These are her comments

For people who don't understand what it means to be on a ventilator but want to take the chance to go out to a movie, have a drink in a bar, go to an arena or back to work.........

For starters, it is NOT an oxygen mask that is put over the mouth while the patient comfortably lies down and reads journals.

Ventilation for Covid-19 is a painful intubation that goes down your throat and stays there until you live or you die.

It is done during anesthesia for 2 to 3 weeks without moving, often upside down, with a tube deposited from your mouth up to the air pipe and allows you to breathe to the rhythm of the lung machine.

The patient can't talk or eat or do anything natural - the machine keeps you alive. Discomfort and pain they feel from this mean that medical experts must administer sedatives and pain meds to ensure pipe tolerance as long as the machine is needed.

It's like being in an artificial coma. After 20 days from this treatment, a young patient loses 40% muscle mass and gets trauma in the mouth or voice cords, as well as possible lung or heart complications.

It is for this reason that old or already weak people can't stand treatment and die. Many of us are in this boat...so stay safe if you don't want to take the chance to end up here. This is NOT the flu!

They put a tube in your stomach, either through your nose or skin for liquid food, a sticky bag around your butt to collect diarrhea, one to collect urine, an IV for liquids and meds...

...an A-line to monitor your BP it is completely dependent on finely calculated with doses, teams of nurses, CRNA, and MA to move your limbs every two hours and lie on a carpet circulating ice-cold liquid to help reduce your 104° degree temp.

All of this while your loved ones cannot even come to visit. You will be alone in a room with your machine. Or your mother will. Or your father. Or your son or daughter. Or wife or husband.

But...you think wearing a mask is uncomfortable and humiliating.

 

It is a stark reminder on what catching the virus can mean. Whilst I have seen pictures I don’t think I have really ever taken in the full impact on what the virus can do to you. Having seen and read this, I for one don’t want to go there

 

My dad died of pancreatic cancer about 17 years ago. I will never forget my last conversation with him--which was by phone sadly. He had been on a ventilator more than one time four years prior when he nearly died in a tornado. As a result of those injuries, Dad was in a medically induced coma for 5 weeks in the ICU at a Mayo Clinic hospital and given a 1% chance to live. Miraculously, he did and was known throughout the hospital as The Miracle Man. He remained in the hospital in one unit or another for another four months and finally went home to the farm with a below-knee amputation and some other orthopedic-related problems but with a great "can-do" attitude. My dad was frickin' awesome.

Anyway, back to ventilators. During our final conversation, Dad shared with me that he was told he'd need to go on a ventilator that evening or die. He said he was tired and that he'd lived a good life--and that he'd never go on a ventilator again. I was devastated but that conversation and his choice affected how I think about the issue of ventilators during the pandemic. Our Arizona governor made it a "selling point" that our state had plenty of ventilators available when he wanted to go off lockdown early. I didn't see that as a comforting part of his plan. And Mr. Sandi had just read at the time that 80% of COVID patients who went on ventilators died. Of course the people who wind up on ventilators are the very ill and probably more likely to die. But our governor reassuring us with "we have plenty of ventilators" certainly didn't ease my mind.

 

Sorry to hear about your dad @Sandi T. , it sounds like he was a real inspiration ❤️

 

Thanks, @Wessa. My dad certainly was an inspiration, not only to me but to my two brothers and to many others as well. The Minneapolis newspaper actually ran a series of articles on him at the time because they'd covered the tornado that injured him. Because of those articles, Dad got lots of cards and letters from folks he didn't know telling him how much he inspired them to get through their own difficulties. He never could quite understand that, though, because from his perspective he was just living his life and being himself. Dad was also a curious and adventurous man. I've wished many a time that he was still alive when I started riding motorcycles because he'd love that--and would probably have been there right beside me!

 

Seriously?? This doesn't even look like a good idea without COVID concerns! And note where this pool party is taking place.

 

That looks like a vision of hell.........

 

It really kinda does, doesn't it?

 

They’re not partying, they’re making soup!

 

As long as it's not Brown Winsor

 

Just so folk can see how things currently stand (anyone who reads this thread regularly will understand my concerns over an overloaded NHS at the peak of the infection bell curve) Our “hospitals trust” has announced today that we have currently NO confirmed COVID-19 cases on any of our sites. We had 172 deaths (upto this point) directly attributable to CV19 & 404 x CV19 discharges since 1st March. (We are a relatively small trust spread out over a large rural area with a few towns in our catchment)
Our normal ICU capacity was roughly 14 beds (With a couple more “over-spill” potential for emergency situations)
Staff I know have suffered, one is at home in a wheelchair on O2, I know one who died... there are more staff that I don’t know still off work with residual effects (mental and physical).
BUT... we’re regrouping and slowly getting our services back on line, clinics are being reworked (telephone and video instead of face to face etc) and we’re becoming a health service again instead of an emergency service. It’s going to be a long road... 5 month of lost “normal activity” to try and make up... but we’ll get there.

 

Not only did you guy’s do a fantastic job during the past 5 months, you continue to do it. We must not forget that continued commitment.