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Hospital TR in the time of COVID:
Finally got to visit my aunt last night. Hospital here in Radcliffe is being super careful. My aunt’s house is about a mile away, so they called us to say she was doing well enough to have 3 visitors.
My cousins and I got there and the nurse had called ahead to the lobby, where they had a check in station. Since we were on the list, they had visitor passes printed out for us, took our temperature, asked the standard questions, etc. We were the only ones in the lobby and had to go directly to the CICU.
To go into her room we had to put on a gown, gloves, and a second mask, and once we were inside, we weren’t allowed to leave until the visit was done.
If you’ve ever seen someone on a ventilator, it’s not pretty, but we still talked to her, and got the rest of the family on face time, which she seemed to respond to with eye movement. We spent about an hour with her before she started falling asleep.
Today we found out they felt like she was ready to come off the ventilator. So another casualty of COVID is that no one was allowed to be there when they extubated her. Usually they’d have family there just in case, but the doctor was optimistic that she’d be ok. And she is. 
They got her off the ventilator and onto a BiPAP and she’s breathing on her own, and responding to some commands.
So now I’m heading back to Ohio with my parents to help them unpack boxes (they just moved into a new place). Mom has to work tomorrow, or we would have stayed.
Anyway, do not recommend having a loved one get non-COVID sick right now (obv don’t get COVID either) because it’s surreal and more uncertain than “normal”.
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So what’s the deal with the latest conservative theory that herd immunity is actually something like 20% and places like New York, Sweden have already hit it and that’s why they’re seeing their cases drop?
Wishcasting so they can force workers to go back to work?
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How dare Florida man exercise his freedom to attack his neighbor’s liberty! Or is that using his liberty to attack his neighbor’s freedom? I get the two confused.
I’m not sure what you’re referencing here, but yes that’s how it worked with covid
They’re fucking idiots
t’s just fucking nuts that so many schools are making stupid decisions that are going to result in sickness and death. Universities are supposed to be full of smart people and are supposed to be able to make smart decisions. I’ve definitely been jaded in the past seeing things like nepotism and organizational politic-ing result in unqualified people being promoted into decision making roles, but this is just something else. The hit these schools will take to their reputation won’t go away, I don’t see how this ends well for them.
It’s a lot more complex than people are willing to admit. Schools have a budget. They have employees that they will need in the future and that they need to keep on currently. A lot of these employees have tenure which means that their jobs and pay is guaranteed.
My FIL is the CFO of a small liberal arts college. Switching to remote learning for just fall would force him to drop budget by 40%. All year would reduce by 60+%. This would potentially bankrupt the school. It’s not like they are flush with options. They are contractually obligated to their employees and ethically obligated to their employees in a financial sense. They have to weigh that against the health concerns of the staff and student bodies.
And as for the endowment, it’s a commonly misunderstood concept. Schools are not able to spend their endowment money. They’re only allowed to spend the interest on anything.
That’s not cool at all. The only other disease that does that is hepatopulmonary syndrome. The treatment for that is more oxygen and the cure is liver transplant. So nifty finding, but it looks like the cure for the Covid version is keep the patient alive long enough for the disease to run its course and hopefully the lung capillaries heal themselves.
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This thing just has more tricks. Yeesh.
Cases haven’t completely dropped in places like New York (just like everywhere they hit a peak and came down from it after mitigation strategies). If this were a plausible theory (it’s been floated here), then cases would endlessly drop to zero or near zero in former hot spots (this hasn’t happened in any hot spot). Instead, New York has had a roughly similar number of cases for the last 9 weeks.
I believe there is a daily max caseload each place can get to based on current testing capacity and also believe there’s probably a level each place won’t get below as long as the pandemic is active. To me, 200 cases per day is high in nearly any population center. Over 100 cases per day is high in sparse low population states. Over 50 cases per day is high in any very sparse low population states. Only a small number of places are doing ‘well’ based on this metric.
In some places, the pandemic is in a ‘flattened’ state and I don’t think the cases are going to go down significantly in these places at all from what they are now if conditions remain the same (they won’t). To underscore this, New York is still ranked number 22 in cases in the country for the week of 8/12-8/18. That’s great from its peak but I don’t think suggests anything resembling herd immunity or ‘burn out’ as the Stanford people suggested.
Seems like a system totally based on money needs a workaround during a pandemic. Got it.
Of course we just can’t collectively conceive of that.
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I’m really glad she’s doing better! Will you get to see her before you have to leave?
Dude is still batting .000
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There were numerous reports of people being sent home because they weren’t sick enough, only to die a few days later. It happened in NYC, and in one of the recent outbreak states - I think Texas, maybe Arizona.
Why is this guy still in a job? Wtf is happening Sweden? You were the chosen one!
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Is Sweden’s top infectious disease specialist a QAnon Reddit forum mod or something?
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It might be if schools don’t open, bars and gyms stay closed, and everyone who is currently being very careful stays mostly isolated. But that’s not herd immunity. It’s stasis created by removing 60-70% of us from the potential infected pool. It also seems unlikely given people will get more lax as cases go down.
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