- Re: yes. Archived Message
Posted by dan
on May 17, 2020, 9:34 pm, in reply to "Re: yes."
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"I've also read the exact opposite -- that covid was put down, despite no test and little evidence." That would be contrary to usual practice and personal experience - I guess basedon this that the number of mislabelled positive covid instances is low - you can believe what you like. "To ignore these studies suggests an unwillingness to see the negative consequences of scaring the population with draconian measures." I'm not ignoring them - large part of my practice is cardiac illness after heart attacks. Corona virus increases thrombotic risk and causes heart failure so much of the adute cardiac illness may be triggered by corona. We converted the coronary icu into a covid icu so we were only able to cope with acute cardiac emergencies by stopping cardiac surgery. There will have also be increased mortality in the population of patients waiting for cardiac surgery. I also look after cancer patients - there will be harm there toobut it's prettyhard to give immune supressing chemotherapy to patients safely in a hospital that's full of corona virus. Dealing with tbese secondary consequences requires further mitigation and planning but should not be beyond the ken of a well led health system even ours. We could have set up cancer diagnostic centres away from hospitals in warehouses with mobile ct scanners for instance. In brief summary I'm not denying the consequences of lockdown - as in a previous post I'm actively involved in working out how we can cope better if there is another surge - but I do kniw that we can't cope when icu's are 4x full of patientss with only covid. "The excess mortality rose very quickly and has come down since lockdown suggesting it's the virus not lockdown."...."big assumption" If the mortality has gone up and come down during lockdown in parallel with the lived hospital experience of patients with covid turning up and dying then and now our ICUs and hospitals are almost empty of dying covid patients it doesn't seek that big an assumption to me. me - " Advocates of no lockdown are not calling for testing though because of course their argument largely relies on denial of severity rather than finding real solutions." "Huh? I'm an advocate of no lockdown but testing and isolation of ill people seems sensible." "sensible is a bit on the fence. Either it's a national program of testing like in South Korea or it's not at all as we've already seen. Easing lockdown without is not at all. "Advocates of a lockdown largely rely on denial of severity of its consequences" - see answer above - I'm aware of negative consequences. I also want lockdown to be over as soon as possible. Easing it now without rigorous testing and isolation will likely lead to a second hit and more lockdown. "Well, for a start, we were told (including by many here) that we could expect 500,000 deaths from this. Do you believe that's accurate still?" I guess and it is nothing more than that - that hopefully 20% of the population has had it and there have been conservatively 40-50,000 deaths. We'll have to wait and see but it will be in a similar order of magnitude. I will be as horrified by 150,000 preventable deaths as 500,000. voices against lockdown were claimining it was a hoax at the outset" - "Again, that painting of critics of a lockdown. Please quote me or any other poster here who has said this." There is a whole world outside of this message board and a large number of voices against lockdown were claiming it was a hoax. me -"SARS and MERS were eradicated. SARS2 won't be because our lives are worthless." You - "Now you're doing what you often accuse others of: equating two virusses. If anyone tries to suggest corona is like the flu, you're the first to jump on them, yet here you're suggesting corona is just like SARS." You may believe I'm a plant and acting in bad faith but I can only repeat - I am an intensive care doctor. I specialise in acute severe respiratory failure. Apart from bacterial pneumonia the commonest cause of resp failure of this type in adults in UK is viral influenza. I have seen a lot of patients with severe flu. I've seen one ICU full of flu patients. It's devesating, comes on suddenly, makes ventilation impossible - and then with support, 1 week later it just gets better - in the majority of cases melts away so that patients are leaving the icu within 10 days. The mortality even in the most severe cases is 20%. I feel like we can win with flu - it's very satisfying. Corona virus is killing people in multiple different ways - it seems untreatable and even when we are winning we still seem to lose because of unforseen complications. The mortality is double that of flu in every age group. In people over 60 it is horrific. I've never seen four extra ICU's full of patients with a single respiratory pathogen in one hospital. Nor have we ever had to build a dialysis unit in two weeks to cope with the burden of new renal failure. I've never worked with 6 other hospitals which have all had to do the same things. Maybe I've just sucumbed to some scary hysteria but I think I'm qualified to call out anyone claiming this virus is flu. You don;t have to like it. SARS, MERS,and SARS2 are all more or less the same virus. Different crown, sars 2 is less virulent, and less transmissable. I think it's a reasonable assumption to believe that it's eradicable. It's a public health question not one of virology per se. The swerve ball may be the extended form of the illness but again with an effective system even that would be manageable. We agree no lockdown - the question is what instead? |