- Re: Multiple sources - week one recovery followed by Archived Message
Posted by dan
on April 1, 2020, 10:54 pm, in reply to "Re: Multiple sources - week one recovery followed by"
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No it's pretty unique - in my experience. Seems like two diseases. 1 viral pneumonitis. Apart from influenza we don't see viral pneumonia very often - occasional say. Now we have wards and wards of people with the same story, and the same xray. Influenza pneumonia has completely different radiology and lung mechanics - rapid onset often impossible to ventilate then better relatively quickly. This is just slow and insidious and inexorable. 2 Cytokine storm Not sure this is the right name but it's how it is described. People who have been stable suddenly deteriorate round about day 9. Usually lung failure but heart and brain involvement also descibed. Also kidney failure. Maybe the virus or the immune response. Either way it's bad. When I left there were 14 patients like this. Now we have converted and filled two more ICUs with patients and are planning to open another. All the hospitals around us in London are doing the same thing. None of it will be enough and certainly an exception to normal rukes of engagement. Apparently, according to the deniers, this is all entirely normal, nothing unusual. Doesn't justify even minor public health measures. Of course it's a false dichotomy. I could not reject more, totalitarian control but neither is this a minor disease which will pass through the population like a bad flu season and with a small peak in excess deaths. So we need a plan which rejects fascism but which also keeps us safe. Pretending this is a hoax or a minor illness or something which doesn't need a concerted response isn't that. It writes off tens if not hundreds of thousands of older people. Not a panic, just an appraisal of the world my colleagues are battling in at the moment and one I hope to return to from Tuesday night. It's here and now. cheers, dan |