Pulled this from FB:
I’m an intensive care specialist in a small city.
Coronavirus isn’t just like the flu, but it’s only really very dangerous to the elderly or the already unwell. Quite a lot of people in their 80s will die, but most of the rest of us will probably be okay.
If you’re in your 70s and you get Coronavirus, you’ve got a really good chance of survival. If I’ve got a bed for you.
If you’re in your 60s and you have a heart attack, you’ve got a really good chance of survival. If I’ve got a bed for you.
If you’re in your 50s and need bowel cancer surgery, you’ve got a really good chance of survival. If I’ve got a bed for you.
If you’re in your 40s and have a bad car accident, you’ve got a really good chance of survival. If I’ve got a bed for you.
If you’re in your 30s and have terrible pre-eclampsia as a complication of pregnancy, you’ve got a really good chance of survival. If I’ve got a bed for you.
If you’re in your 20s and have a bad reaction to a party drug, you’ve got a really good chance of survival. If I’ve got a bed for you.
I have 7 beds equipped with life support machines. We have a plan to increase to about 25. Getting more isn’t a matter or more equipment or more money, that bit is easy. There are not enough skilled staff, even if we all work double shifts every day for six months (and we probably will).
If 50% of my city gets infected, that’s 75,000 people. If 5% of them need life support (which is the estimate), that’s 3750 people. For 25 beds.
And then I might not have a bed for you.
So it’s up to you to flatten the curve. Wash your hands. Stay home.
If you are in your 70s and you get community acquired pneumonia, same thing. That’s not a reason to do
this. It just isn’t. I’m witnessing worrisome social consequences beginning already. My life hasn’t changed much...it’s still difficult, and not terribly busy...I’m used to crap and more crap, for years now...but this is wearing on a few people I know already. The “novel-ty” is starting to wear off already.
My step dad said, a few days that feels in some ways like a month ago, “There’ll probably be some looting.” ...Maybe worse. I don’t even want to think about it.
I was pissed off for unrelated/ related reasons...went for a spin on my scooter last night for a good 1/2 hr or 40 minutes, and had a good cry. I just let it all out, and rode around until I felt better. I didn’t give a s**t what the socially distanced small dog walkers, when they saw me stopped for a minute and just looked at me and kept going, thought of that. There were teenagers in the dimly lit playground that I passed by. It was mostly teenagers out, if anyone at all. I went around the empty parking lot of the supermarket - drove up to the closed doors to read the signs, “Two cleaning items and paper products per customer. We are practicing social distancing and....” (couldn’t see the rest, there was a glare on the glass...but Kathy with the blue roof told me earlier they were also limiting milk - which ran out last I was there - bread, and meat to 2 per person. That’s a good thing, she thought, except her kids go through four litres fast). It was closed at 8:00. Usually open until 11. The few shops in the complex were closed. A girl, I think grocery staff, maybe in her early 20’s, was sitting on the front curb on speaker phone with a friend, saying they are closing earlier tomorrow and “we’re on emergency provisions now” or something like that. Her friend was saying, “Can they even do that?! Just change the hours and cut staff like that?! I mean it’s like, what the?...” I rode away. Shouldn’t eavesdrop. It was eerie, and I heard some teenagers arguing in another parking lot across the street. The road was pretty much deserted...one man walked past me. I didn’t feel safe stopping on the corner, on a shopping corner in suburbia, because nobody was around and the air felt strange. I shudder to think what downtown might look like next week, or even now. I haven’t been down there in 10 days and it was already getting a bit more tense in places. I think, and feel deep in my gut, that this particular approach to this particular virus is not right. But it doesn’t matter what I think. It never did. We have to carry on like this anyway for now or the centre cannot hold. My hope is that if the stats show in the next little while that this approach is not necessary, they will end this. But I feel concerned that ‘they’ don’t really ever want to end this.
popularresistance.org
edmontonjournal.com
calgaryherald.com
www.biometricupdate.com
