The Coronavirus

And this is Fact:

Viruses lose significant momentum during Spring and summer, the number effected will subside drastically.

Just do your part to stay healthy and wait it out.

There's only about a dozen of these threads running.. Why not one more.

Not changing plans unless external sources change them for me.

Mike

For all the people pooh-poohing the coronavirus and insisting it's no big deal, were you aware of the fact that in Italy there aren't enough breathing machines to treat all of the seriously ill, and doctors there are literally triaging their patients and deciding who they will treat and who they will let die?

Article from the ATLANTIC web site:

The Extraordinary Decisions Facing Italian Doctors

There are now simply too many patients for each one of them to receive adequate care.

March 11, 2020
Yascha Mounk

Two weeks ago, Italy had 322 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could lavish significant attention on each stricken patient.

One week ago, Italy had 2,502 cases of the virus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could still perform the most lifesaving functions by artificially ventilating patients who experienced acute breathing difficulties.

Today, Italy has 10,149 cases of the coronavirus. There are now simply too many patients for each one of them to receive adequate care.

Doctors and nurses are unable to tend to everybody They lack machines to ventilate all those gasping for air.

Now the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (SIAARTI) has published guidelines for the criteria that doctors and nurses should follow in these extraordinary circumstances. The document begins by likening the moral choices facing Italian doctors to the forms of wartime triage that are required in the field of “catastrophe medicine.”

Instead of providing intensive care to all patients who need it, its authors suggest, it may become necessary to follow “the most widely shared criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources.”

The principle they settle upon is utilitarian. “Informed by the principle of maximizing benefits for the largest number,” they suggest that “the allocation criteria need to guarantee that those patients with the highest chance of therapeutic success will retain access to intensive care.”

The authors, who are medical doctors, then deduce a set of concrete recommendations for how to manage these impossible choices, including this: “It may become necessary to establish an age limit for access to intensive care.”

Those who are too old to have a high likelihood of recovery, or who have too low a number of “life-years” left even if they should survive, will be left to die. This sounds cruel, but the alternative, the document argues, is no better. “In case of a total saturation of resources, maintaining the criterion of ‘first come, first served’ would amount to a decision to exclude late-arriving patients from access to intensive care.”

In addition to age, doctors and nurses are also advised to take a patient’s overall state of health into account: “The presence of comorbidities needs to be carefully evaluated.” This is in part because early studies of the virus seem to suggest that patients with serious preexisting health conditions are significantly more likely to die. But it is also because patients in a worse state of overall health could require a greater share of scarce resources to survive: “What might be a relatively short treatment course in healthier people could be longer and more resource-consuming in the case of older or more fragile patients.”

These guidelines apply even to patients who require intensive care for reasons other than the coronavirus, because they too make demands on the same scarce medical resources. As the document clarifies, “These criteria apply to all patients in intensive care, not just those infected with CoVid-19.”

My academic training is in political and moral philosophy. I have spent countless hours in fancy seminar rooms discussing abstract moral dilemmas like the so-called trolley problem. If a train is barreling toward five innocent people who are tied to the tracks, and I could divert it by pulling the lever, but at the cost of killing an innocent bystander, should I do it?

Part of the point of all those discussions was, supposedly, to help professionals make difficult moral choices in real-world circumstances.

If you are an overworked nurse battling a novel disease under the most desperate circumstances, and you simply cannot treat everyone, however hard you try, whose life should you save?

Despite those years of theory, I must admit that I have no moral judgment to make about the extraordinary document published by those brave Italian doctors. I have not the first clue whether they are recommending the right or the wrong thing.

But if Italy is in an impossible position, the obligation facing the United States is very clear: To arrest the crisis before the impossible becomes necessary.

This means that our political leaders, the heads of business and private associations, and every one of us need to work together to accomplish two things: Radically expand the capacity of the country’s intensive-care units. And start engaging in extreme forms of social distancing.

Cancel everything. Now.

Take a deep breath, relax and, most important of all, TURN THE TV OFF!!!

Just keep in mind that this virus has not been around long enough for anyone to truly understand it... And they tend to evolve as so many in the past have...

Current stats are meaningless as they do not have a large enough sample base

Be safe, and use good personal hygiene...

kellem wrote:
Well, looks like i stuck my foot in my mouth with previous post.....our trip to Canary island was canceled.

A lot more than your trip and others trips are being canceled or will be canceled. If we are going to beat this virus it is going to take a lot of social separation to prevent it from exponentially growing out of control.

Do what feels right. Elderly vulnerables will check out a few years early.

Black Humor
Social Security and Medicare are going to save billions of dollars

Well, looks like i stuck my foot in my mouth with previous post.....our trip to Canary island was canceled.

Well, since I originated this post, I guess it is time I chime in. I agree with most all of the posts with the exception of a few. I have planned a 7 or 8 month trip with a lot of interesting places to visit. We've been doining this kind of travel for 27 years now and it takes a lot of researching and planning to come up with places of interest. Several reservations are paid in full with a refund if ahead of time, in most cases just a couple of days. I will play it by ear and continue with our plans if at all possible. We are both eldery (boy that hurts) and are in fair health. I have stocked up on groceries, meds and household supplies, none that will go to waste, especially the wine, lol. We will go on the theory prepare for the worst and hope for the best. We will either outwait it or it will outwait us... Stay healthy!

Where are all the cocky people that were posting in the first four pages. Its amazing how fast things have changed in only five days. This virus went completely through China in 30 days. Take this seriously folks. Be safe, and good health to everyone.