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Working in hospitals, nobody will say it was a gross over-reaction. Everyone agrees we didn't delay the breakout long enough to get the right staff, equipment,

Working in hospitals, nobody will say it was a gross over-reaction. Everyone agrees we didn't delay the breakout long enough to get the right staff, equipment, and materials in place to treat, resulting in tens of thousands of additional deaths. Here in Florida when cases spiked, patients were having to be sedated with drugs not originally meant for sedation, due to etomidate, ketamine, and propofol supplies running out. There was no PPE, everyone was reusing masks and gowns. Doctors got sick, some died. Everyone was working 60+ hours and I know many hospitals were offering $100+/hr with multi thousand dollar bonuses per week to get staff to come in. Staff still turned down these offers, due to the stress. Advent Health setup a dedicated hospital for COVID in every major city to try and efficiently use PPE, they were quickly overwhelmed and the covid patient's flooded every hospital, resulting in even less PPE availability. One ICU nurse I know summed it up best "We went from working 2-3 patients that each had one problem, to work 5-8 patients, each one with a myriad of problems. I want to go back to the simple patients, I have to code patients several times a week now." Sure maybe if our government was effective we could have come up with a better plan, but implementing a "segregation" of elderly from the general population simply wasn't going to happen. The efforts to "lower the curve" were 100% necessary and didn't go far enough or last long enough. Now we get the worst of everything, mass death, continuing outbreak and a damaged economy. Also: These weren't small podunk hospitals, these were the Advent Health's, Baptist Health, Cleveland Clinic size health systems, it's not a lack of money or trying that this all went down, it was a real crisis.

guscost 6y ago
You are making a good argument for the initial lockdown, not this continuing insanity. We should have started challenge trials on day one, I would have been first in line to try this new respiratory virus (and I did sign up to participate in one project that has still not been approved). From there we could have evaluated the risk to different groups, and started building population immunity in the best way for overall public health. Instead, we went down the most cowardly and destructive path possible, and it is a travesty. The people who led us here should be sacked.
- necrotic_comp 6y ago
  "Continuing insanity" ? It's completely absurd to say that we can achieve controlled herd immunity when a) we don't know how much of the population is required to be infected to achieve it and b) we don't know how long immunity lasts and c) the serology tests are not completely accurate. In order to beat this thing back, we need to use the tools our ancestors did - quarantine and isolation - and complement them with modern strategies. In the US, we still have approximately 40k additional infections a day, and we're drowning in a sea of comorbidities. Re-opening to let however many people die so we can get back to normal isn't a strategy, it's giving up.
  - guscost 6y ago
    I just described a modern strategy that includes tactical quarantine and isolation! What we have done instead (spew absurd panic from every mainstream institution for the better part of a year, while sending kids home from school and COVID patients into nursing homes) is a disgrace. More about the modern strategy that we could have used instead: https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA
    - necrotic_comp 6y ago
      It's the "tactical" part I have a problem with - from what we're seeing, we don't have enough information about the disease to make an informed decision. E.g. the drastic differences in infection rates and mortality in different countries in Europe with nominally similar strategies gives us an indication that there is a lot more to learn. Additionally, we don't know the long term consequences of this thing yet - it's possible that it's going to cause chronic issues a lot of people who would've otherwise been healthy.
      - guscost 6y ago
        The best way to get that information quickly is to expose volunteers to infection, which is admittedly an ethical lapse, but one nowhere near as bad as what actually happened (“spread panic and write off the nursing home residents!”) in my opinion. > Additionally, we don't know the long term consequences of this thing yet - it's possible that it's going to cause chronic issues a lot of people who would've otherwise been healthy. That is a risk I understand and am completely willing to take. Instead, a bunch of people with medical degrees have banned me from making this choice, hiding behind “informed consent” doublespeak (and pernicious nonsense in this case - nobody is informed, the risks from an unprecedented year-long lockdown are unknown too, and those are simply the stakes) while taking a giant dump all over the Hippocratic Oath. The reckoning can’t come soon enough.

guscost 6y ago

You are making a good argument for the initial lockdown, not this continuing insanity. We should have started challenge trials on day one, I would have been first in line to try this new respiratory virus (and I did sign up to participate in one project that has still not been approved). From there we could have evaluated the risk to different groups, and started building population immunity in the best way for overall public health. Instead, we went down the most cowardly and destructive path possible, and it is a travesty. The people who led us here should be sacked.

necrotic_comp 6y ago
"Continuing insanity" ? It's completely absurd to say that we can achieve controlled herd immunity when a) we don't know how much of the population is required to be infected to achieve it and b) we don't know how long immunity lasts and c) the serology tests are not completely accurate. In order to beat this thing back, we need to use the tools our ancestors did - quarantine and isolation - and complement them with modern strategies. In the US, we still have approximately 40k additional infections a day, and we're drowning in a sea of comorbidities. Re-opening to let however many people die so we can get back to normal isn't a strategy, it's giving up.
- guscost 6y ago
  I just described a modern strategy that includes tactical quarantine and isolation! What we have done instead (spew absurd panic from every mainstream institution for the better part of a year, while sending kids home from school and COVID patients into nursing homes) is a disgrace. More about the modern strategy that we could have used instead: https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA
  - necrotic_comp 6y ago
    It's the "tactical" part I have a problem with - from what we're seeing, we don't have enough information about the disease to make an informed decision. E.g. the drastic differences in infection rates and mortality in different countries in Europe with nominally similar strategies gives us an indication that there is a lot more to learn. Additionally, we don't know the long term consequences of this thing yet - it's possible that it's going to cause chronic issues a lot of people who would've otherwise been healthy.
    - guscost 6y ago
      The best way to get that information quickly is to expose volunteers to infection, which is admittedly an ethical lapse, but one nowhere near as bad as what actually happened (“spread panic and write off the nursing home residents!”) in my opinion. > Additionally, we don't know the long term consequences of this thing yet - it's possible that it's going to cause chronic issues a lot of people who would've otherwise been healthy. That is a risk I understand and am completely willing to take. Instead, a bunch of people with medical degrees have banned me from making this choice, hiding behind “informed consent” doublespeak (and pernicious nonsense in this case - nobody is informed, the risks from an unprecedented year-long lockdown are unknown too, and those are simply the stakes) while taking a giant dump all over the Hippocratic Oath. The reckoning can’t come soon enough.