Is Anyone Fixated on this Coronavirus?

[chickentender]

It kinds surprised me last night because I wasn't sure if I had shortness of breath or just anxiety about my cough so I called the ER. I asked how long the wait was and I said I was calling ahead because I've had a cough for a week and shortness of breath and that I think I might have the coronavirus. The lady kinda giggled and said oh we don't even have the coronavirus here yet so there is nothing to worry about and no need to call ahead and just come in. Her response scared me so I juat stayed home. If not even the ER workers are taking it seriously what do we do? I bet everyone at the hospital has been exposed and they don't even realize it because of this type of attitude.

This doesn't surprise me. My best friend has been sick for a week and called her doctor and he said you aren't at high risk of being exposed, you aren't high risk if you have it either for complications. The doctor didn't even tell her to stay home until she's better, so she is quarantining herself, but a family member of hers has to go to work with the public every day. I keep hearing stories like this. I've read about people with symptoms and known exposure having to fight to finally be tested even after needing medical care and not being told to isolate, then eventually testing positive
We can't change this though. We can only try our best on a personal level.

 

[Rathgar]

re: U.S:
why are we the only country in the world told NOT to wear masks?
why are we the only country in the world allowed to wander freely - no attempt to contain this?
Why are we the only country in the world that is HARDLY TESTING ANYONE???

 

[chickentender]

re: U.S:
why are we the only country in the world told NOT to wear masks?
why are we the only country in the world allowed to wander freely - no attempt to contain this?
Why are we the only country in the world that is HARDLY TESTING ANYONE???

I'm with you!! I am furious and upset about the response in this country! It's costing lives and is going to continue to do so until drastic measures and public education are happening at all levels!!!!

 

[FlipperK]

re: U.S:
why are we the only country in the world told NOT to wear masks?
why are we the only country in the world allowed to wander freely - no attempt to contain this?
Why are we the only country in the world that is HARDLY TESTING ANYONE???

Masks -

1.) Because your everyday masks that you can buy at the grocery store will not stop the viral particles. They are next to useless when it come to containing/filtering out germs/viruses.

2.) There is already a mass buy on masks anyways, if you are not sick then you need to leave the masks to someone who is sick.

3.) WASH YOUR HANDS

 

[Cuchculan]

Saint Patrick's day next week. Ireland has called off all parades. There is a first in our history. New rules on everything. Nobody is allowed walk into a doctor's waiting room. You must ring from outside and explain why you are there. Sporting events won't be happening either. Nothing that involves big crowds. Heck if we are going to catch it, it will happen anyway. Even if we never leave the house. I can see them wanting to lower the risk. Even washing your hands is only something that will lower the risk. Nothing else. Doesn't mean you still won't get it. Have had the flu many a time. Even after always washing my hands. Some will get it. Others won't. Game of chance. Those mouth masks will get just as infected when you take them back off using your hands. They are a waste of time. That's life for you. Who knows when something will hit them.

 

[Lanchparty7]

I'm with you!! I am furious and upset about the response in this country! It's costing lives and is going to continue to do so until drastic measures and public education are happening at all levels!!!!

One of the reasons my freak out level is so high on this is because of the way this is being handled. Flights from China, South Korea and Italy (which by the way has put the entire country in quarantine) are still being allowed in. People are still getting on cruise ships. People are still going to sporting events. People are still calling it “just the flu”. I saw a tweet from uh...a very important person with a very important title that was disturbing. This person isn’t taking Covid-19 seriously and the tweet was basically telling people to not worry and “more people die from the flu”. Many, many people take everything said by this person as gospel and will go about their daily lives like nothing is wrong.

 

[Daisymae]

People at my job are coughing all over the place, I’m almost positive some of them have it. I’ll probably end up getting it.

 

[JustMe]

People at my job are coughing all over the place, I’m almost positive some of them have it. I’ll probably end up getting it.

I'm sorry that's so scary! Hopefully you don't get it!

One of the reasons my freak out level is so high on this is because of the way this is being handled. Flights from China, South Korea and Italy (which by the way has put the entire country in quarantine) are still being allowed in. People are still getting on cruise ships. People are still going to sporting events. People are still calling it “just the flu”. I saw a tweet from uh...a very important person with a very important title that was disturbing. This person isn’t taking Covid-19 seriously and the tweet was basically telling people to not worry and “more people die from the flu”. Many, many people take everything said by this person as gospel and will go about their daily lives like nothing is wrong.

My parents are in their 70s and that is their attitude too. Like oh we are healthy it only kills people with underlying conditions. The flu is much worse and kills many of thousands a year. They are just being stupid! I pray they don't get it and die because of their ignorant thinking and behavior!

 

[shezian]

Testimony of a surgeon working in Bergamo, in the heart of Italy's coronavirus outbreak

In one of the non-stop e-mails that I receive from my hospital administration on a more than daily basis, there was a paragraph on "how to be responsible on social media", with some recommendations that we all can agree on. After thinking for a long time if and what to write about what's happening here, I felt that silence was not responsible. I will therefore try to convey to lay-people, those who are more distant from our reality, what we are experiencing in Bergamo during these Covid-19 pandemic days.
I understand the need not to panic, but when the message of the danger of what is happening is not out, and I still see people ignoring the recommendations and people who gather together complaining that they cannot go to the gym or play soccer tournaments, I shiver. I also understand the economic damage and I am also worried about that. After this epidemic, it will be hard to start over.
Still, beside the fact that we are also devastating our national health system from an economic point of view, I want to point out that the public health damage that is going to invest the country is more important and I find it nothing short of "chilling" that new quarantine areas requested by the Region has not yet been established for the municipalities of Alzano Lombardo and Nembro (I would like to clarify that this is purely personal opinion).
I myself looked with some amazement at the reorganization of the entire hospital in the previous week, when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly "emptied", elective activities interrupted, intensive care unit freed to create as many beds as possible. Containers arriving in front of the emergency room to create diversified routes and avoid infections. All this rapid transformation brought in the hallways of the hospital an atmosphere of surreal silence and emptiness that we did not understand, waiting for a war that had yet to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would never come with such ferocity (I open a parenthesis: all this was done in the shadows, and without publicity, while several newspapers had the courage to say that private health care was not doing anything).
I still remember my night shift a week ago spent without any rest, waiting for a call from the microbiology department. I was waiting for the results of a swab taken from the first suspect case in our hospital, thinking about what consequences it would have for us and the hospital. If I think about it, my agitation for one possible case seems almost ridiculous and unjustified, now that I have seen what is happening. Well, the situation is now nothing short of dramatic. No other words come to mind. The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night.
One after the other, these unfortunate people come to the emergency room. They have far from the complications of a flu. Let's stop saying it's a bad flu. In my two years working in Bergamo, I have learned that the people here do not come to the emergency room for no reason. They did well this time too. They followed all the recommendations given: a week or ten days at home with a fever without going out to prevent contagion, but now they can't take it anymore. They don't breathe enough, they need oxygen. Drug therapies for this virus are few.
The course mainly depends on our organism. We can only support it when it can't take it anymore. It is mainly hoped that our body will eradicate the virus on its own, let's face it. Antiviral therapies are experimental on this virus and we learn its behavior day after day. Staying at home until the symptoms worsen does not change the prognosis of the disease.
Now, however, that need for beds in all its drama has arrived. One after another, the departments that had been emptied are filling up at an impressive rate. The display boards with the names of the sicks, of different colors depending on the department they belong to, are now all red and instead of the surgical procedure, there is the diagnosis, which is always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Now, tell me which flu virus causes such a rapid tragedy.
Because that's the difference (now I get a little technical): in classical flu, besides that it infects much less population over several months, cases are complicated less frequently: only when the virus has destroyed the protective barriers of our airways and as such it allows bacteria (which normally resident in the upper airways) to invade the bronchi and lungs, causing a more serious disease. Covid 19 causes a banal flu in many young people, but in many elderly people (and not only) a real SARS because it invades the alveoli of the lungs directly, and it infects them making them unable to perform their function. The resulting respiratory failure is often serious and after a few days of hospitalization, the simple oxygen that can be administered in a ward may not be enough.
Sorry, but to me, as a doctor, it's not reassuring that the most serious are mainly elderly people with other pathologies. The elderly population is the most represented in our country and it is difficult to find someone who, above 65 years of age, does not take at least a pill for high blood pressure or diabetes.
I can also assure you that when you see young people who end up intubated in the ICU, pronated or worse, in ECMO (a machine for the worst cases, which extracts the blood, re-oxygenates it and returns it to the body, waiting for the lungs to hopefully heal), all this confidence for your young age goes away. And while there are still people on social media who boast of not being afraid by ignoring the recommendations, protesting that their normal lifestyle habits have "temporarily" halted, the epidemiological disaster is taking place. And there are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.
The cases multiply, up to a rate of 15-20 hospitalizations a day all for the same reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the emergency room is collapsing. Emergency provisions are issued: help is needed in the emergency room. A quick meeting to learn how the to use to emergency room EHR and a few minutes later I'm already downstairs, next to the warriors on the war front. The screen of the PC with the chief complaint is always the same: fever and respiratory difficulty, fever and cough, respiratory insufficiency etc ... Exams, radiology always with the same sentence: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All needs to be hospitalized. Some already needs to be intubated, and goes to the ICU.
For others, however, it is late. ICU is full, and when ICUs are full, more are created. Each ventilator is like gold: those in the operating rooms that have now suspended their non-urgent activity are used and the OR become a an ICU that did not exist before. I found it amazing, or at least I can speak for Humanitas Gavazzeni (where I work), how it was possible to put in place in such a short time a deployment and a reorganization of resources so finely designed to prepare for a disaster of this magnitude. And every reorganization of beds, wards, staff, work shifts and tasks is constantly reviewed day after day to try to give everything and even more. Those wards that previously looked like ghosts are now saturated, ready to try to give their best for the sick, but exhausted.
The staff is exhausted. I saw fatigue on faces that didn't know what it was despite the already grueling workloads they had. I have seen people still stop beyond the times they used to stop already, for overtime that was now habitual. I saw solidarity from all of us, who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask "what can I do for you now?" or "leave that admission to me, i will take care of it." Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny. There are no more shifts, schedules.
Social life is suspended for us. I have been separated for a few months, and I assure you that I have always done my best to constantly see my son even on the day after a night shift, without sleeping and postponing sleep until when I am without him, but for almost 2 weeks I have voluntarily not seen neither my son nor my family members for fear of infecting them and in turn infecting an elderly grandmother or relatives with other health problems. I'm happy with some photos of my son that I look at between tears and a few video calls. So you should be patient too, you can't go to the theater, museums or gym.
Try to have mercy on that myriad of older people you could exterminate. It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us, try to leave the house only to indispensable things.
Do not go en masse to make stocks in supermarkets: it is the worst thing because you concentrate and the risk of contacts with infected people who do not know they are infected. You can go there without a rush. Maybe if you have a normal mask (even those that are used to do certain manual work), put it on. Don't look for ffp2 or ffp3. Those should serve us and we are beginning to struggle to find them. By now we have had to optimize their use only in certain circumstances, as the WHO recently recommended in view of their almost ubiquitous running low.
Oh yes, thanks to the shortage of certain protection devices, many colleagues and I are certainly exposed despite all the other means of protection we have. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols. Some infected colleagues also have infected relatives and some of their family members are already struggling between life and death. We are where your fears could make you stay away. Try to make sure you stay away.
Tell your family members who are elderly or with other illnesses to stay indoors. Bring him the groceries please. We have no alternative. It's our job. Indeed what I do these days is not really the job I'm used to, but I do it anyway and I will like it as long as it responds to the same principles: try to make some sick people feel better and heal, or even just alleviate the suffering and the pain to those who unfortunately cannot heal.
I don't spend a lot of words about the people who define us heroes these days and who until yesterday were ready to insult and report us. Both will return to insult and report as soon as everything is over. People forget everything quickly. And we're not even heroes these days. It's our job. We risked something bad every day before: when we put our hands in a belly full of someone's blood we don't even know if they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we do it even though we know they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we stick ourselves during an operation on a patient with HIV and take the drugs that make us vomit all day long for a month. When we read with anguish the results of the blood tests after an accidental needlestick, hoping not to be infected. We simply earn our living with something that gives us emotions. It doesn't matter if they are beautiful or ugly, we just take them home. In the end we only try to make ourselves useful for everyone. Now try to do it too, though: with our actions we influence the life and death of a few dozen people. You with yours, many more.
Please share and share the message. We need to spread the word to prevent what is happening here from happening all over Italy.»

 

[JustMe]

Testimony of a surgeon working in Bergamo, in the heart of Italy's coronavirus outbreak

In one of the non-stop e-mails that I receive from my hospital administration on a more than daily basis, there was a paragraph on "how to be responsible on social media", with some recommendations that we all can agree on. After thinking for a long time if and what to write about what's happening here, I felt that silence was not responsible. I will therefore try to convey to lay-people, those who are more distant from our reality, what we are experiencing in Bergamo during these Covid-19 pandemic days.
I understand the need not to panic, but when the message of the danger of what is happening is not out, and I still see people ignoring the recommendations and people who gather together complaining that they cannot go to the gym or play soccer tournaments, I shiver. I also understand the economic damage and I am also worried about that. After this epidemic, it will be hard to start over.
Still, beside the fact that we are also devastating our national health system from an economic point of view, I want to point out that the public health damage that is going to invest the country is more important and I find it nothing short of "chilling" that new quarantine areas requested by the Region has not yet been established for the municipalities of Alzano Lombardo and Nembro (I would like to clarify that this is purely personal opinion).
I myself looked with some amazement at the reorganization of the entire hospital in the previous week, when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly "emptied", elective activities interrupted, intensive care unit freed to create as many beds as possible. Containers arriving in front of the emergency room to create diversified routes and avoid infections. All this rapid transformation brought in the hallways of the hospital an atmosphere of surreal silence and emptiness that we did not understand, waiting for a war that had yet to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would never come with such ferocity (I open a parenthesis: all this was done in the shadows, and without publicity, while several newspapers had the courage to say that private health care was not doing anything).
I still remember my night shift a week ago spent without any rest, waiting for a call from the microbiology department. I was waiting for the results of a swab taken from the first suspect case in our hospital, thinking about what consequences it would have for us and the hospital. If I think about it, my agitation for one possible case seems almost ridiculous and unjustified, now that I have seen what is happening. Well, the situation is now nothing short of dramatic. No other words come to mind. The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night.
One after the other, these unfortunate people come to the emergency room. They have far from the complications of a flu. Let's stop saying it's a bad flu. In my two years working in Bergamo, I have learned that the people here do not come to the emergency room for no reason. They did well this time too. They followed all the recommendations given: a week or ten days at home with a fever without going out to prevent contagion, but now they can't take it anymore. They don't breathe enough, they need oxygen. Drug therapies for this virus are few.
The course mainly depends on our organism. We can only support it when it can't take it anymore. It is mainly hoped that our body will eradicate the virus on its own, let's face it. Antiviral therapies are experimental on this virus and we learn its behavior day after day. Staying at home until the symptoms worsen does not change the prognosis of the disease.
Now, however, that need for beds in all its drama has arrived. One after another, the departments that had been emptied are filling up at an impressive rate. The display boards with the names of the sicks, of different colors depending on the department they belong to, are now all red and instead of the surgical procedure, there is the diagnosis, which is always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Now, tell me which flu virus causes such a rapid tragedy.
Because that's the difference (now I get a little technical): in classical flu, besides that it infects much less population over several months, cases are complicated less frequently: only when the virus has destroyed the protective barriers of our airways and as such it allows bacteria (which normally resident in the upper airways) to invade the bronchi and lungs, causing a more serious disease. Covid 19 causes a banal flu in many young people, but in many elderly people (and not only) a real SARS because it invades the alveoli of the lungs directly, and it infects them making them unable to perform their function. The resulting respiratory failure is often serious and after a few days of hospitalization, the simple oxygen that can be administered in a ward may not be enough.
Sorry, but to me, as a doctor, it's not reassuring that the most serious are mainly elderly people with other pathologies. The elderly population is the most represented in our country and it is difficult to find someone who, above 65 years of age, does not take at least a pill for high blood pressure or diabetes.
I can also assure you that when you see young people who end up intubated in the ICU, pronated or worse, in ECMO (a machine for the worst cases, which extracts the blood, re-oxygenates it and returns it to the body, waiting for the lungs to hopefully heal), all this confidence for your young age goes away. And while there are still people on social media who boast of not being afraid by ignoring the recommendations, protesting that their normal lifestyle habits have "temporarily" halted, the epidemiological disaster is taking place. And there are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.
The cases multiply, up to a rate of 15-20 hospitalizations a day all for the same reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the emergency room is collapsing. Emergency provisions are issued: help is needed in the emergency room. A quick meeting to learn how the to use to emergency room EHR and a few minutes later I'm already downstairs, next to the warriors on the war front. The screen of the PC with the chief complaint is always the same: fever and respiratory difficulty, fever and cough, respiratory insufficiency etc ... Exams, radiology always with the same sentence: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All needs to be hospitalized. Some already needs to be intubated, and goes to the ICU.
For others, however, it is late. ICU is full, and when ICUs are full, more are created. Each ventilator is like gold: those in the operating rooms that have now suspended their non-urgent activity are used and the OR become a an ICU that did not exist before. I found it amazing, or at least I can speak for Humanitas Gavazzeni (where I work), how it was possible to put in place in such a short time a deployment and a reorganization of resources so finely designed to prepare for a disaster of this magnitude. And every reorganization of beds, wards, staff, work shifts and tasks is constantly reviewed day after day to try to give everything and even more. Those wards that previously looked like ghosts are now saturated, ready to try to give their best for the sick, but exhausted.
The staff is exhausted. I saw fatigue on faces that didn't know what it was despite the already grueling workloads they had. I have seen people still stop beyond the times they used to stop already, for overtime that was now habitual. I saw solidarity from all of us, who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask "what can I do for you now?" or "leave that admission to me, i will take care of it." Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny. There are no more shifts, schedules.
Social life is suspended for us. I have been separated for a few months, and I assure you that I have always done my best to constantly see my son even on the day after a night shift, without sleeping and postponing sleep until when I am without him, but for almost 2 weeks I have voluntarily not seen neither my son nor my family members for fear of infecting them and in turn infecting an elderly grandmother or relatives with other health problems. I'm happy with some photos of my son that I look at between tears and a few video calls. So you should be patient too, you can't go to the theater, museums or gym.
Try to have mercy on that myriad of older people you could exterminate. It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us, try to leave the house only to indispensable things.
Do not go en masse to make stocks in supermarkets: it is the worst thing because you concentrate and the risk of contacts with infected people who do not know they are infected. You can go there without a rush. Maybe if you have a normal mask (even those that are used to do certain manual work), put it on. Don't look for ffp2 or ffp3. Those should serve us and we are beginning to struggle to find them. By now we have had to optimize their use only in certain circumstances, as the WHO recently recommended in view of their almost ubiquitous running low.
Oh yes, thanks to the shortage of certain protection devices, many colleagues and I are certainly exposed despite all the other means of protection we have. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols. Some infected colleagues also have infected relatives and some of their family members are already struggling between life and death. We are where your fears could make you stay away. Try to make sure you stay away.
Tell your family members who are elderly or with other illnesses to stay indoors. Bring him the groceries please. We have no alternative. It's our job. Indeed what I do these days is not really the job I'm used to, but I do it anyway and I will like it as long as it responds to the same principles: try to make some sick people feel better and heal, or even just alleviate the suffering and the pain to those who unfortunately cannot heal.
I don't spend a lot of words about the people who define us heroes these days and who until yesterday were ready to insult and report us. Both will return to insult and report as soon as everything is over. People forget everything quickly. And we're not even heroes these days. It's our job. We risked something bad every day before: when we put our hands in a belly full of someone's blood we don't even know if they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we do it even though we know they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we stick ourselves during an operation on a patient with HIV and take the drugs that make us vomit all day long for a month. When we read with anguish the results of the blood tests after an accidental needlestick, hoping not to be infected. We simply earn our living with something that gives us emotions. It doesn't matter if they are beautiful or ugly, we just take them home. In the end we only try to make ourselves useful for everyone. Now try to do it too, though: with our actions we influence the life and death of a few dozen people. You with yours, many more.
Please share and share the message. We need to spread the word to prevent what is happening here from happening all over Italy.»

Wow! I feel sick to my stomach now! I've having a major panic attack now!

 

[Lanchparty7]

My goodness...that article! I hope that gets shared far and wide as I am more than worried that what is happening in Italy...will happen here in the USA. Someone noted that at the end of January, Italy had about 600 cases and about 20 dead...look where they are now. Well right now the USA has about 600 cases but unlike Italy, doesn’t seem to be taking it seriously. My city is still having their big annual St. Patricks Day parade this weekend...that seems like a really bad idea.

 

[blueberries]

Well that Italy article is scary. Sounds like the hospital has every floor, every room, attic to basement filled with patients who have coronavirus. But taking a closer look at the numbers - there are a little over 1000 hospitals in Italy and just under 9,200 cases of the virus. If ALL of those were to be hospitalized that would average out to approximately 9 per hospital. The number of active cases is just under 8,000 so we are down to 8 per hospital. Most likely not all are hospitalized. If only the 733 cases that are labeled as "serious" were hospitalized that would be less than 1 per hospital. So in reality there might be up to 5 cases per hospital.

In the US there are only 2.2 cases per million. Worldwide there have been a little over 4,000 deaths. In comparison he flu has killed 92,000+ this year and malaria has killed 186,000+. There have been a total of 2,465,000+ total deaths due to communicable diseases this year alone; coronavirus makes up less than 1% of this total. TB alone kills over a million people every year.

I don't want to underplay what could potentially be a very serious issue, especially for the older population, but at this point there is no need to panic. Precautions are being taken all over the place, schools sanitized and closed, stores closed if a worker is found to have it, activities canceled, flights canceled, potential cases are quarantined. If only people would be this cautious all year we could eradicate all colds, flues and stomach viruses. I'm concerned because I do have health issues (along with others in my family) which put me in a higher risk category so there is a good chance if I get this I'll end up in the hospital or worse, but honestly, at this point I find what this has done to the stock market to be much more concerning.

 

[chickentender]

My parents are in the past of the country with the most cases now. I have not been successful in persuading them to leave because they are confused about what news to believe. I am having a hard time with my stress. Hard time sleeping, can't stop cryin, running myself down to the point of chills. My family is very small. I know everyone has to go sometime. But, I wasn't ready for this. If I lose my parents all at once, I have one sibling. My sibling avoids being close to me. That will be it for my family. I just keep thinking how much I love my parents and trying so hard to get them out of there before they are locked down and they don't seem to understand the severity. That they may have no choice but to stay there if they do not leave now.

 

[blueberries]

Here's a bit of good news - the daily number of new cases in China has dropped dramatically. There were only 7 new cases yesterday. Considering the population and density of China this is great to hear. I hope the downward trend continues.

 

[Lanchparty7]

My parents are in the past of the country with the most cases now. I have not been successful in persuading them to leave because they are confused about what news to believe. I am having a hard time with my stress. Hard time sleeping, can't stop cryin, running myself down to the point of chills. My family is very small. I know everyone has to go sometime. But, I wasn't ready for this. If I lose my parents all at once, I have one sibling. My sibling avoids being close to me. That will be it for my family. I just keep thinking how much I love my parents and trying so hard to get them out of there before they are locked down and they don't seem to understand the severity. That they may have no choice but to stay there if they do not leave now.

Well if it is my state they are in (I believe we have the most cases of any one state now)...they are confined mostly to one area/county and the Governor has basically put that area on lockdown. Many of the cases there are linked to one man who spread it through his community. Most of the other population centers of the state (including my area) don’t have any cases yet and as much as I am not a fan of the Governor, he seems to be taking proactive, more cautious approach than others have.

 

[anxiousinamerica]

My worries are not of me contracting coronavirus, because chances are slim that for a normal healthy person, it'll be anything more than a dry cough and low-grade fever. What I am worried about is the greater implications...stores closed down, food shortages, prescription drug supplies cut off (I'm on three meds), not being able to leave the house or see any other human beings, socialize or do anything fun, and if I so much as get the sniffles, does this mean I have to sequester myself and not go to work, just in case it may be coronavirus? My mom turns 70 this year and lives right next door...what if I'm unaware that I have it and pass it to her? Should I not visit her, just to be safe? The way the media is reporting it (which I also have my issues with), this whole thing could just make life a living hell for everyone, even those who aren't sick.

 

[Certate]

I had a nasty panic attack today in the shower over this ******* virus.

People really need to pull there heads out, its getting worse and the only thing people can say is "well the flu is worse" no its actually not.
Its people with this kind of thinking that are going to spread this even worse.

At this point I don't even know what to do, its almost like no matter how much you try you will get this virus because its not taken serious.

I still don't understand what the U.S. is doing, why are politicians waiting for this to get severe???

 

[bin_tenn]

Not fixated, but I'd be lying if I said it hasn't crossed my mind once or twice. I've had a bit of a tickle in my throat and some subtle nasal drainage for the past day or two. From all the coverage, it sounds like the symptoms at onset may be more rapid and much more telling, but it does depend on the person. But worried? No. I don't feel like I have any reason to believe that my immune system cannot fight it off, as I rarely ever catch anything at all, save for one or two colds a year.

 

[Certate]

Testimony of a surgeon working in Bergamo, in the heart of Italy's coronavirus outbreak

In one of the non-stop e-mails that I receive from my hospital administration on a more than daily basis, there was a paragraph on "how to be responsible on social media", with some recommendations that we all can agree on. After thinking for a long time if and what to write about what's happening here, I felt that silence was not responsible. I will therefore try to convey to lay-people, those who are more distant from our reality, what we are experiencing in Bergamo during these Covid-19 pandemic days.
I understand the need not to panic, but when the message of the danger of what is happening is not out, and I still see people ignoring the recommendations and people who gather together complaining that they cannot go to the gym or play soccer tournaments, I shiver. I also understand the economic damage and I am also worried about that. After this epidemic, it will be hard to start over.
Still, beside the fact that we are also devastating our national health system from an economic point of view, I want to point out that the public health damage that is going to invest the country is more important and I find it nothing short of "chilling" that new quarantine areas requested by the Region has not yet been established for the municipalities of Alzano Lombardo and Nembro (I would like to clarify that this is purely personal opinion).
I myself looked with some amazement at the reorganization of the entire hospital in the previous week, when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly "emptied", elective activities interrupted, intensive care unit freed to create as many beds as possible. Containers arriving in front of the emergency room to create diversified routes and avoid infections. All this rapid transformation brought in the hallways of the hospital an atmosphere of surreal silence and emptiness that we did not understand, waiting for a war that had yet to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would never come with such ferocity (I open a parenthesis: all this was done in the shadows, and without publicity, while several newspapers had the courage to say that private health care was not doing anything).
I still remember my night shift a week ago spent without any rest, waiting for a call from the microbiology department. I was waiting for the results of a swab taken from the first suspect case in our hospital, thinking about what consequences it would have for us and the hospital. If I think about it, my agitation for one possible case seems almost ridiculous and unjustified, now that I have seen what is happening. Well, the situation is now nothing short of dramatic. No other words come to mind. The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night.
One after the other, these unfortunate people come to the emergency room. They have far from the complications of a flu. Let's stop saying it's a bad flu. In my two years working in Bergamo, I have learned that the people here do not come to the emergency room for no reason. They did well this time too. They followed all the recommendations given: a week or ten days at home with a fever without going out to prevent contagion, but now they can't take it anymore. They don't breathe enough, they need oxygen. Drug therapies for this virus are few.
The course mainly depends on our organism. We can only support it when it can't take it anymore. It is mainly hoped that our body will eradicate the virus on its own, let's face it. Antiviral therapies are experimental on this virus and we learn its behavior day after day. Staying at home until the symptoms worsen does not change the prognosis of the disease.
Now, however, that need for beds in all its drama has arrived. One after another, the departments that had been emptied are filling up at an impressive rate. The display boards with the names of the sicks, of different colors depending on the department they belong to, are now all red and instead of the surgical procedure, there is the diagnosis, which is always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Now, tell me which flu virus causes such a rapid tragedy.
Because that's the difference (now I get a little technical): in classical flu, besides that it infects much less population over several months, cases are complicated less frequently: only when the virus has destroyed the protective barriers of our airways and as such it allows bacteria (which normally resident in the upper airways) to invade the bronchi and lungs, causing a more serious disease. Covid 19 causes a banal flu in many young people, but in many elderly people (and not only) a real SARS because it invades the alveoli of the lungs directly, and it infects them making them unable to perform their function. The resulting respiratory failure is often serious and after a few days of hospitalization, the simple oxygen that can be administered in a ward may not be enough.
Sorry, but to me, as a doctor, it's not reassuring that the most serious are mainly elderly people with other pathologies. The elderly population is the most represented in our country and it is difficult to find someone who, above 65 years of age, does not take at least a pill for high blood pressure or diabetes.
I can also assure you that when you see young people who end up intubated in the ICU, pronated or worse, in ECMO (a machine for the worst cases, which extracts the blood, re-oxygenates it and returns it to the body, waiting for the lungs to hopefully heal), all this confidence for your young age goes away. And while there are still people on social media who boast of not being afraid by ignoring the recommendations, protesting that their normal lifestyle habits have "temporarily" halted, the epidemiological disaster is taking place. And there are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.
The cases multiply, up to a rate of 15-20 hospitalizations a day all for the same reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the emergency room is collapsing. Emergency provisions are issued: help is needed in the emergency room. A quick meeting to learn how the to use to emergency room EHR and a few minutes later I'm already downstairs, next to the warriors on the war front. The screen of the PC with the chief complaint is always the same: fever and respiratory difficulty, fever and cough, respiratory insufficiency etc ... Exams, radiology always with the same sentence: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All needs to be hospitalized. Some already needs to be intubated, and goes to the ICU.
For others, however, it is late. ICU is full, and when ICUs are full, more are created. Each ventilator is like gold: those in the operating rooms that have now suspended their non-urgent activity are used and the OR become a an ICU that did not exist before. I found it amazing, or at least I can speak for Humanitas Gavazzeni (where I work), how it was possible to put in place in such a short time a deployment and a reorganization of resources so finely designed to prepare for a disaster of this magnitude. And every reorganization of beds, wards, staff, work shifts and tasks is constantly reviewed day after day to try to give everything and even more. Those wards that previously looked like ghosts are now saturated, ready to try to give their best for the sick, but exhausted.
The staff is exhausted. I saw fatigue on faces that didn't know what it was despite the already grueling workloads they had. I have seen people still stop beyond the times they used to stop already, for overtime that was now habitual. I saw solidarity from all of us, who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask "what can I do for you now?" or "leave that admission to me, i will take care of it." Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny. There are no more shifts, schedules.
Social life is suspended for us. I have been separated for a few months, and I assure you that I have always done my best to constantly see my son even on the day after a night shift, without sleeping and postponing sleep until when I am without him, but for almost 2 weeks I have voluntarily not seen neither my son nor my family members for fear of infecting them and in turn infecting an elderly grandmother or relatives with other health problems. I'm happy with some photos of my son that I look at between tears and a few video calls. So you should be patient too, you can't go to the theater, museums or gym.
Try to have mercy on that myriad of older people you could exterminate. It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us, try to leave the house only to indispensable things.
Do not go en masse to make stocks in supermarkets: it is the worst thing because you concentrate and the risk of contacts with infected people who do not know they are infected. You can go there without a rush. Maybe if you have a normal mask (even those that are used to do certain manual work), put it on. Don't look for ffp2 or ffp3. Those should serve us and we are beginning to struggle to find them. By now we have had to optimize their use only in certain circumstances, as the WHO recently recommended in view of their almost ubiquitous running low.
Oh yes, thanks to the shortage of certain protection devices, many colleagues and I are certainly exposed despite all the other means of protection we have. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols. Some infected colleagues also have infected relatives and some of their family members are already struggling between life and death. We are where your fears could make you stay away. Try to make sure you stay away.
Tell your family members who are elderly or with other illnesses to stay indoors. Bring him the groceries please. We have no alternative. It's our job. Indeed what I do these days is not really the job I'm used to, but I do it anyway and I will like it as long as it responds to the same principles: try to make some sick people feel better and heal, or even just alleviate the suffering and the pain to those who unfortunately cannot heal.
I don't spend a lot of words about the people who define us heroes these days and who until yesterday were ready to insult and report us. Both will return to insult and report as soon as everything is over. People forget everything quickly. And we're not even heroes these days. It's our job. We risked something bad every day before: when we put our hands in a belly full of someone's blood we don't even know if they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we do it even though we know they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we stick ourselves during an operation on a patient with HIV and take the drugs that make us vomit all day long for a month. When we read with anguish the results of the blood tests after an accidental needlestick, hoping not to be infected. We simply earn our living with something that gives us emotions. It doesn't matter if they are beautiful or ugly, we just take them home. In the end we only try to make ourselves useful for everyone. Now try to do it too, though: with our actions we influence the life and death of a few dozen people. You with yours, many more.
Please share and share the message. We need to spread the word to prevent what is happening here from happening all over Italy.»

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