As #COVID19 escalates, & predictably hospital and ICU admissions follow, I am being asked to do more interviews. Please, let me be clear, physicians are not saying, “I told you so”. We have been here before, and this is all so predictable. It’s hard not to sound frustrated.
We want the best for our patients. We’ve advocated for plans that would have avoided this situation. We’ve seen other provinces do this the right way. We are left pleading with people to do the right things at great personal cost, but they are fatiguing from this harassment.
Most of us will make it through this alive, but we all will have scars from it. Physical, mental, social, financial, we will all be marked by these half hearted measures. Death is only one marker of this pandemic, but right now it’s the one I’m most focused on.
I openly acknowledge your anger, fear, frustration and scepticism about all of this. I know my bubble is not yours and my perspective my never completely touch you, but I appeal to your civility, kindness and integrity.
Stay home,
worship at home,
eat take out,
play outside.
And when it is offered to you take the vaccine. 🙂
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First a caveat. Until we have good data most of this thread is theoretical, but to keep you out of suspense, I believe that our current vaccines will protect us from evolving strains of coronavirus.
The reason for this is that the target chosen for these vaccines was its virulence factor, the thing that makes this normally annoying old virus deadly. The capsid spike protein that interacts with our bodies ACE2 receptor.
Viruses need a way to get into cells to infect them. Previous generations had spike proteins that opened doors on tissues of the throat and nose. The ensuing infection and inflammation is the stuffiness that we associate with a cold. You can survive a sore throat.
A short tread on community.
You might know that I am a champion of @coffee_outside. It was a simple idea that brought people together every Friday morning in a local park. Most arrived by bicycles and some even drank tea but that wasn’t it was all about.
It was really about being connected with people who were once strangers. It helped that we were like minded souls, but given time and commitment it flourished just as those relationships did.
Like other things in this crazy time, it has dwindled. Despite being outside by nature our group has gotten smaller. Like a seed that drys.
This is not where we are now, but given the ICU admission rates and EXPONENTIAL growth rate of cases, coupled with our inability to contact trace in a timely matter, this is where we are heading. Unless something is done.
If you are reading this thread, you are probably mostly in agreement with the problem. The challenge is to depoliticize this issue. We were all together on this in March, and as a result the first wave was brought under control. Our eastern provinces still have control.
Some uncomfortable truths about ageism and #COVIDー19. The average life expectancy of someone who lives to 80 is 9 years, they however are most likely to die if infected, and should they get sick enough to need ICU support their mortality pushes 80%
Consequently, they rarely are admitted to ICU. This means: 1. ICU occupancy lags hospital admission rates significantly and is an insensitive metric for healthcare capacity and strain. 2. These are preventable deaths that take significant number of quality years with them.
The bad news is that it is a statistical game. As hospital numbers increase, so will the proportion of people with favourable ICU outcomes who need our care. That’s when we start filling our beds. When those people get sick they take weeks of treatment.
I apologize to everyone I could not individually reply to. So a brief thread about ICU capacity, as it pertains to Edmonton in the time of #COVID19.
Edmonton’s General ICU beds are spread out amongst all of its hospitals. We have two major trauma centres situated at the University Hospital and Royal Alexandra Hospital. The Sturgeon, Grey Nuns and Misericordia handle both surgical and medical disease.
The university also has the Mazinkowski which manages heart surgery and ECMO, and a neurosurgical ICU. The RAH has multiple step down units, both surgical and medical that can act provide high level care.
So here I go into turbulent waters. I do so because I have had several requests to weigh in on the matter of #Masks. I would like to qualify my statements first. I am not an infectious disease specialist. I would refer you to @AntibioticDoc for a higher level of expertise.
I do believe that non medical masks play an integral part in the mitigation and management of the spread of #COVID19. I use the word believe specifically because despite the recent proliferation of studies around masking, they are mostly of poor quality and applicability.
If you follow me you know that I despise oversimplifications. My concerns about masks from the very beginning has been the need to portray it as a solution to the pandemic, as way to get kids back in school, and people back to work. In a sense, a magic bullet.