- Re: Multiple sources - week one recovery followed by Archived Message
Posted by dan
on April 2, 2020, 7:51 am, in reply to "Re: Multiple sources - week one recovery followed by"
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Thanks Willem. Bacterial pneumonia complicating viral pneumonia is well recognised, particularly with flu, but is treatable with antibiotics and again has a specific clinical picture seen only in a few cases we have admitted. All are being treated with antibiotics in any case. However, there is a test used in US, not here called Procalcitonin (PCT). Procalcitonin goes up in bacterial but not viral infection. In anecdotal reports from there the majority of patients have no increase in their PCT. It's not very frequent but it does happen that young people are admitted with seasonal influenza complicated by pneumonia. I'm referring to H1N1 influenza. By contrast, H1N1 influenza caused an immune reaction different from SARS-COV2 which rather than leading to low oxygen alone also made the lungs extremely stiff and impossible to ventilate. We are not seeing that. In Germany once people have had it they are being allowed back to work. In Singapore, widespread testing, isolation of cases and their contacts has allowed a much less stringent quarantine policy. Food riots are because of a failure of support for the population. If everyone in the UK was given £2000 per month and food distribution was coordinated I think adaptation would be easier. Of course that's very unlikely to happen. I don't think you are considering the consequences of letting the virus run through the population unchecked. Unless you are arguing that people with corona virus should stay at home and be left to die - in which case those who would survive with oxygen alone will also die increasing mortality - then hospital systems will become overwhelmed. Health care workers will be ill in massive numbers and all routine and emergency hospital work will cease. At that point food riots will seem tame in comparison. I saw on the BBC last night an article making the argument that an economic downturn of 6% would lead to more death from reduced life expectancy. As if the powers that be give a #### about deaths from poverty. We are being softened up for official arguments to let this thing sweep through the population which has always been effectively the governments position. 1% of then population is 500,000 people. Letting the elderly and disabled die for economic benefit is eugenics. Off Guardian for me now resembles Spiked. Ultra libertarian arguments which require denial of climate change and now corona virus and which serve the interests of the elite. There are ways to manage this illness which don't require authoritarian lockdown. Failure to engage or think about them is helping the government. Denial is crass and also serves this purpose. We need ultimate transparency - to be shown the real data - to have a grown up conversation about how we can manage. Because the government we have is incapable of anything but lies and favours letting the poor and elderly die, that is impossible. |