Greetings friends,
I would like to start this post by stating that my goal is not to instill panic, but to provide an analysis on this situation which I believe I am qualified to do and to perhaps prompt some of you to take this Covid-19 situation more seriously. I have an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry, a Doctor of Medicine degree and completed my residency training at the Mayo Clinic. I practiced medicine for 10 years. I have co-authored several scientific papers and know how to interpret scientific data. I have spent dozens of hours over the last 6 weeks combing through the available data surrounding this virus outbreak. This is not “just another flu”. The main reason for serious concern is the fact that our medical system is not prepared or equipped to deal with the surge in demand we are likely to see as this situation unfolds. While our government did eventually cut off travel arrivals from China, it was too little too late. Hundreds of thousands of people from China arrived in America before this ban went into effect, many of them likely infected and asymptomatic. Additionally, our CDC and FDA were asleep at the wheel, and in typical government bureaucratic fashion fucked the management of this up due to their desire to maintain total control of the testing procedure. This is now a situation of containment. It’s a numbers game. Yes, if you are under 65 and healthy you are not likely to become seriously ill if infected with Covid-19. However, do you have family, friends or neighbors that are older, or have pre-existing health problems? Are you willing to be so cavalier about this outbreak and be the reason one of these people ends up hospitalized? We do not have the capacity here in America to deal with tens of thousands of people that need an ICU bed. We have about 100k ICU beds here in the USA. At this very moment, approximately 75-80k of those beds are occupied with people sick from all sorts of regular ailments (yes, including some with “regular flu”) Below are some recently updated numbers from Italy and Korea to hopefully wake you “it’s just the flu” bros the fuck up.
Horrific data points out of Lombardy, Italy
9-10% cases in ICU
10% of doctors and nurses can’t work because they tested positive
South Korea
-Total cases 5766—>6284
-Death toll 35—>42
Almost all of the data coming out of China has been complete bullshit. Including all of the latest data showing that they have almost no new cases and most people have recovered. At one point in China, 700 million people were locked down and forced to home quarantine. Do you honestly believe they would do that for “just another flu”? Here in America we have been behind the curve and have not been doing the appropriate amount of testing and social distancing needed to slow the spread enough to prevent eventually overwhelming our healthcare system. South Korea has done a much better job with this, and they still are dealing with a rapid increase in cases. If this doesn’t change soon, we are in big trouble here in America. We cannot build a hospital in 10 days like they did in China. We do not have excess ventilators and nursing staff. If you do not take this situation seriously, you are actually becoming part of the problem. I wish all of you the best. I consider all of you my friends, and I hope that none of you ultimately become sick, or have a family member who becomes sick. I’d recommend obvious common sense stuff such as frequent hand washing and using hand sanitizer, but I’d also suggest avoiding crowded situations if they are not necessary. It’s possible that if enough people change their behavior, and all of the large conferences and gatherings are canceled or postponed we can minimize the impact of this on our society. If not, we are going to have a similar situation to China and Italy very soon. It’s entirely possible it’s too late to stop that from occurring. Be prepared for school closures and travel disruptions. Ideally, be prepared to spend a minimum of two weeks (three-four better) without leaving your home. Have enough food, medicine, (alcohol) etc that you could hunker down and avoid contact with others and public places. Chances of needing to do this are not astronomical, but they are also not zero.
This game actually has me excited, from what I read, it could be one of those game changers similar to Unreal Tournament back in the day so they are saying. Any thoughts?
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