Until now, the coronavirus has 46,485 confirmed cases with 593 deaths. Notice I didn’t say “only” because that would be dismissing those that have died and I would never be about that life.
Pres. Trump is reportedly mulling the decision to pull back on his social distancing decision from over a week ago and allow businesses to open back up to get the economy moving but experts from John Hopkins Center do not think that would be a smart decision.
My fear is that the markets will keep tanking. It’s not about the stores opening up because the markets were losing points when they were open in the first place. The markets want to know the American people are being treated with ventilators and respirators and thus the comeback starts. Things are not spreading as fast right now because of Pres. Trump’s hard decision to put these current directives in place.
Tom Inglesby, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Director and also listed as specializing in pandemics and infectious diseases spent a while trying to educate and inform anyone who would listen and share his pleading message:
In last 24 hrs there've been prominent US voices calling for a stop to social distancing, citing rationale that they're worse than impact of COVID itself. It’s worth looking very closely at that claim, where we are in US COVID epidemic and what happens if we stop. 1/x
— Tom Inglesby, MD (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [1]
COVID has been spreading w/ exponential growth in US for some time, and we’re just beginning to get an understanding of how extensively. There
are nearly 40,000 cases recognized in the US as of today, w/ ~100 deaths
today. A few weeks ago, we had recognized 70 cases total. 2/x— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [2]
Some hospitals have said publicly that within a week they will not have ventilators to treat everyone with COVID anymore. 3/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [3]
There continue to be big diagnostic limitations. Shortages in reagents, swabs. Don’t have rapid diagnostics in many hospitals yet, so it can be days before doctors and nurses can find out if a pt in front of them has COVID. 4/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [4]
We don’t have capacity to diagnose many of the COVID cases that are not sick enough to be in the hospital, so those numbers aren’t counted in our national totals. 5/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [5]
There continues to be terrible shortages in the masks that health care workers need to keep from getting sick with this disease. 6/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [6]
How do we gain time to let hosps get more supplies & prepare for high number of pts? How do we lower the speed of spread of COVID in US? How do we lower odds that ICUs will run out of vents, hospitals run out of space? The answer for now is large scale social distancing.7/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [7]
In Asia, we’ve seen these interventions work to lower
pace of the epidemic, lower numbers of critically ill, lower
the number of people who get COVID. In
Asia where big social distancing measures have been in place for two months,
they have had very strong impact. 8/x— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [8]
In Asia they’ve slowed the disease by slowing social interaction. Left to its own, this disease spreads from 1 person to about 2.5 people, and then they do the same, and so on. For this disease to stop, we need to make it so that the avg person spreads it to <1 other person. 9/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [9]
These big social distancing measures take time to work. The impact of big interventions in Wuhan China took about 3 wks to start to reverse things. And then everyday after the situation got better. In the US, we’re about 7 to 10 days into this, depending on the state.10/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [10]
To drop all these measures now would be to accept that COVID pts will get sick in extraordinary numbers all over the country, far beyond
what the US health care system could bear. 11/x— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [11]
Many models report that health care systems will be completely overwhelmed/collapse by the peak of cases if major social distancing is not put in place. 12/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [12]
If a health care system in a given community stops working, can no longer provide care to the ill, the case fatality rate for COVID will be far higher than 1% – we would not be able to care for some or all of the expected 5% of recognized cases that get critically ill. 13/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [13]
Beyond that, if hospitals were completely overwhelmed, they may struggle
to provide even oxygen for some or many of the 15% of recognized cases expected to be “severely ill”. let alone provide care for other life threatening conditions. 14/x— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [14]
Anyone advising the end of social distancing now, needs to fully understand what the country will look like if we do that. COVID would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, could kill potentially millions in the yr ahead with huge social and economic impact across the country. 15/x
— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [15]
Before considering big changes to social distancing measures
now, we should as quickly as possible get to strongest possible position for COVID response – we’re no where near that now. We’ll need rapid Dxs in place almost every location where a pt can be seen for care.16/x— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [16]
We’ll need extraordinary quantity, reserve+production lines
of masks, PPE so that shortages at hosps and clinical sites around country
are no longer possible. We’lll need to have more vents on the way. We’ll need capacity to provide med care to many more that we can now.17/x— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [17]
Once we have those things in place, it would be a far less risky time to take stock of social distancing measures in place and consider what might gradually be reduced with trial and error. We would have learned more about the experience
in Asia as they try to do that.21/x— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020 [18]
The number of flu cases/deaths are somewhat related to the fact that many people don’t bother to get the flu shots. Coronavirus has no known vaccine. There are a few drugs that appear to sometimes lessen the impact of the disease, but none have been proven by testing. Removing the restrictions on movement by the general population surely guarantees many unnecessary deaths.
People be smart. Don’t panic, there are tens of thousands of people if not hundreds of infected people who were not confirmed cases. The virus is spreading like fire due to the very late actions taken. Please be careful.
What’s happening in Italy could be us in a few weeks. Practice social distancing. We all hate staying at home and being able to dine out. Be patient. If the officials are afraid to take the extra measures, we can do so and protect ourselves.
This piece was written by Wayne Dupree on March 24, 2020. It originally appeared in WayneDupree.com [19] and is used by permission.
Read more at WayneDupree.com:
[VIDEO] Fit And Healthy Mother Films Coronavirus Struggle From Hospital Bed — Every Breath Is A ‘Battle’ [20]
MD Doctors Claim Coronavirus Surge Is Getting Closer; “Tip Of The Iceberg” [21]
Report: Pelosi and Schumer Blocked Payments to Struggling American Families Over “Wind and Solar Tax Credits” [22]