COVID-19: Where are we now #6
In surgery, emergency medicine and obstetrics, a runaway situation can develop in a patient, where the medical team always seems one step behind the disease. /2
In surgery, emergency medicine and obstetrics, a runaway situation can develop in a patient, where the medical team always seems one step behind the disease. /2
A diligent and careful doctor can find themselves only having the evidence for a pathological process – and therefore confidence in choice of intervention - once the process has evolved into a worse situation. /3
When a medical emergency triggers this sort of cascade of calamities, trying to catch up with the disease process is rarely successful. /4
These situations are most commonly resolved successfully when the doctor extrapolates one or two stages in advance of the disease, and acts decisively with an intervention that at first might can seem excessive. /5
This is our current situation with COVID-19: Careful and thoughtful handing of infections in nursing homes has been taken, because they were a major source of disease spread, but now it has been taken, the sum of those infections constitute only a small proportion of cases. /6
A new analysis of spread within workplaces can identify additional industries to focus interventions on, but by the time those issues are resolved, the disease will have spread to other niches in the community. /7
This needs to stop now. This is not a criticism of past actions; it is observation that the situation has changed. We no longer have the time to trial successive moderate interventions. We need to act decisively; we need a hard, fast, lockdown. – end – .
