- Joined
- Mar 5, 2018
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Not trying diminish the grief and horrible sequelae of those impacted by bad outcome COVID infection.One side is listening to science with regard to mask wearing: any kind of vapor barrier that will limit the expulsion (via nose or mouth) of droplets containing viral particles will limit the likelihood of infection. This has been fairly extensively studied (plenty of recent studies on air travel with infected patients), and is the basis for surgeons wearing masks in the OR. It doesn't definitively protect the wearer, but when adopted by a large group of people the risk of transmission is greatly reduced. The anti-mask crowd is just as hysterically ignorant as the anti-vax crowd, and they'll let you know it too. I and other family members have been accosted on several occasions by people claiming knowledge that the whole thing is a joke or plot or fake. It's just amazing. And I am a dyed-in-the-wool Edmond Burkian conservative (that's read 'conservative', not 'Republican', not 'GOP', definitely not 'Trump supporter).
I think the statistics are still off for mortality--all our stats on mortality for other viruses, say influenza, include statistically theorized asymptomatic caseloads, statistically theorized numbers of patients that did not seek care, etc. Most of the COVID stats are just raw data comprised of positive & negative tests and deaths. People claim large numbers of asymptomatic or subclinical undocumented, but they haven't been factored into the current stats.
And you always have to consider the varying degree of experience people have, because people do experience vastly different symptoms. Yes, odds are in your favor like any other illness, but until you have a friend, family member or colleague die after an extensive battle in the ICU, there's a good chance you won't take it as seriously as someone that has.
From listening to lectures and reports by ICU docs, some have suggested that patients may have been inadvertently harmed by medical and ancillary professionals using ventilators cavalierly with unintended lung damage leading to DIC and renal failure when they assumed that a low O2 sat pulse ox reading was sufficient metric for treatment.
Also read reports that in crowded hospital settings, ventilators were used on infected patients to prevent expired aerosolized virus from infecting other patients and health care workers because vents as a closed loop can ensure that expired air from infected patients can be cleaned through HEPA filters integrated to the system.
There are also numerous reports that even low 02 sat symptomatic patients were treated by circumventing ventilation and recovered by being placed in prone position while receiving oxygen by nasal cannula and supportive therapies such as steroids.
During my ICU rotations the most experienced attendings were hesitant to vent patients due to concerns related to exacerbatIon of respiratory decompensation and potential contribution to vent induced DIC and renal failure. Other reported complications included coagulopathies in a setting of hypoxia leading to arrhythmias and cardiac arrest.
Is it possible that much of the infection data and deaths are conflated to a number to beat down an incumbent with almost religious fervor?
Why do some media outlets insist on reporting mere detection of virus in a binary fashion without fleshing out factors like viral load as it relates to disease course?
This seems like an unscientific response potentially capitalizing on fear as a ploy for control and possible manipulation.
By now with so many nations impacted, the scientific community should better understand the difference between mere detection of virus versus true epidemiological relevance.
With all the disparate information being purported by “scientists”, it is difficult to believe in any report’s objectivity.
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