COVID19: Perspective From A (Sort Of...) Expert-Adjacent Person

Fwiw I totally get what you’re saying. We need to seriously look at where the point of diminishing returns is, where health benefits are sufficient and economic impacts are mitigated.

Unfortunately, that seems as much an ethical issue as a science issue.

I work in a nursing home (cooking), if I get sick and go to work it could potentially kill everyone there. I went to Wal-Mart yesterday wearing a surgical mask with eye visor. I’m not taking anything lightly.

I think it’s too late. We are going to be like Italy to some degree.

Some people think it’s only old people so they don’t worry about others or themselves as you do. Then again, you are Canadian.

Don’t deceive yourself with romanticized views of Canadians, there are a lot of passive-aggressive assholes around here.

They are ALL in Quebec though.

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Guys, with all respect, while I can’t stop you from doing this entirely, I was hoping to keep THIS thread specifically about the disease itself and process of treating it in health systems as much as possible. While I understand that the economic fallout and other considerations may be unavoidable in some discussion, I’d prefer it remain on the other thread.

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It’s hard to separate one from the other because those are the two issues resulting from this crisis, but its your thread so OK then.

I agree, but you guys already have a 750-post thread arguing about politics and economics of the disease, so I’m sure you can manage to carry it on there. I’d like this to be easier for people to navigate if they want information about the actual disease and “what should I do” kind of stuff.

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How effective are masks?

Interesting how a relatively discrete vector (food prep in a nursing home) could come to the fore as a major determinant in a pandemic.

Your own hygiene and some relatively simple measures could be the difference between life and death for a lot of people.

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Non-trivial effect but not entirely protective. My understanding is that they actually do more to protect people around the wearer if the wearer is sick - e.g. if you’re sick, it keeps you from spewing droplets around on other people - than they protect the wearer from other people.

For this reason, it’s probably more important that all HCW’s start wearing masks around hospitals than having randos on the street wearing them. If HCW’s get the virus, they are asymptomatic for awhile and don’t realize it, if they spread to patients and other colleagues, that creates a bigger problem.

Which leads to one of the other “system” issues we’re staring at if this gets bad: if the RN’s and MD’s who can treat these patients start dropping or get infected, hospitals won’t just have issues with having enough beds but also may become short-staffed, which can turn into a vicious cycle because the healthy workers have to stay longer, work longer shifts, get more tired, may start to make mistakes or wear down themselves…that’s another concern we have. There have been discussions about how to handle that - bringing back retired docs (bad idea IMO), getting private practice docs who have some training to suddenly jump back in and start taking hospital shifts…

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27 deaths in one nursing home in WA. Imagine you were the person who introduced the virus there.

Is this true of the N95 as well?

It also occurs to me that @EyeDentist is probably better suited to answer this than I am…I can talk about general info related to disease, course, etc but someone who actually operates on people would know more about masks than I would.

In Italy, non-intensivists have been pressed into service as their colleagues fall ill. This includes the likes of dermatologists and ophthalmologists. In that regard, an ophthalmologist here has offered us his colleagues a refresher regarding the finer points of mechanical ventilation:

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No, a properly fitted and functioning N95 mask is an effective barrier to infection.

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I won’t derail it any further but I came across this Twitter thread. Read a book by the guy, but otherwise have no clue who he is.

Point is, similar to @anon50325502, I am not surprised at all by how most young people are acting, but I’m 20 years old and my number one concern is my grandmother.

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Can you speak a little more on

  1. what to expect with the possible/likely bump in infections when quarantine policies are relaxed at some point in the future.

  2. likely hood of the virus mutating and reinfecting a previously infected populace. And/or mutating into an even more deadly strain.

  1. Definitely a concern. I am a bit worried that we’re going to see everyone think 2 weeks from now that everything is totally fine because the number of cases in their area doesn’t seem that high, everyone goes back to work and starts to be business as usual, and then we’ll continue to see little waves of localized outbreaks as this hits different pockets of the States.

  2. I’m no virologist and not well suited to comment. It’s unclear right now whether the reports of recovered people getting re-infected are legit or not, or if that’s related to testing issues.

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