Covid will it ever end??

[REWahoo]

Speaking of flu season, not much activity yet:

 

[aaronc879]

I see the pill having little to no effect on the covid crisis since the same people who won't get a vaccine or wear a mask also won't take a pill if it is related to covid. Covid will remain for many years.

 

[disneysteve]

If our area you need not go to hospitals or doctor offices for Covid tests. They are usually done at pharmacies (drive through) or labs. You can also buy at home tests from the pharmacies.

Pharmacies do them here too, but only by appointment, and I've had many patients tell me they came to us because they couldn't get an appointment at CVS for a couple of days.


Home tests are great. I have a couple in the closet myself. But jobs and schools won't accept those as proof. They require a PCR with documented results.


Our urgent cares also do all of the testing for the over 14,000 employees of our hospital system. It's not unusual for us to have 10-15 of those per day at my location and we have 7 locations.


Trust me. We will all be very happy when these crazy volumes die down. There's just no sign of that happening yet. As we move into cold and flu season, it's just getting worse. Once kids went back to school, volume shot up. Kids were healthy all summer, as usual, but once they were back in school, even with masks, much of the normal respiratory stuff started spreading around again.

 

[disneysteve]

Speaking of flu season, not much activity yet:

Yeah, it's early. We've had a smattering of flu cases but hardly any. Flu starts ramping up after Thanksgiving typically and runs through the winter. We always see our volumes spike after Thanksgiving and again after Christmas because of all the family gatherings and parties.

 

[Montecfo]

Pharmacies do them here too, but only by appointment, and I've had many patients tell me they came to us because they couldn't get an appointment at CVS for a couple of days.


Home tests are great. I have a couple in the closet myself. But jobs and schools won't accept those as proof. They require a PCR with documented results.


Our urgent cares also do all of the testing for the over 14,000 employees of our hospital system. It's not unusual for us to have 10-15 of those per day at my location and we have 7 locations.


Trust me. We will all be very happy when these crazy volumes die down. There's just no sign of that happening yet. As we move into cold and flu season, it's just getting worse. Once kids went back to school, volume shot up. Kids were healthy all summer, as usual, but once they were back in school, even with masks, much of the normal respiratory stuff started spreading around again.

I trust you, but you were referring to people thinking they are sick. PCR tests are usually non-urgent for travel, school or employment. Those folks should not be overwhelming hospitals.

Here I got one recently at a lab. Lab open until 10PM. No one there, just walk in.

So local anecdotal evidence is just that, which is my point.

 

[disneysteve]

I trust you, but you were referring to people thinking they are sick. PCR tests are usually non-urgent for travel, school or employment. Those folks should not be overwhelming hospitals.

Here I got one recently at a lab. Lab open until 10PM. No one there, just walk in.

So local anecdotal evidence is just that, which is my point.

I'm very glad to hear there are areas where the crush has died down. I hope it happens here soon. And it's great that there are places where you can easily get tested without an appointment. I wish there were more of those. They are sorely needed. So many of our patients really don't need to be seen in urgent care; they simply need a COVID test to get back to work or school, but coming to us is the fastest most convenient option.

 

[Chuckanut]

So many of our patients really don't need to be seen in urgent care; they simply need a COVID test to get back to work or school, but coming to us is the fastest most convenient option.

Emphasis added.....

This sounds like a design problem. (It reminds me of a 1970's car - Chevy Vega? -that required the mechanic to disconnect the engine mounts and jack up the engine to remove and replace a spark plug.) A bad design that required too much extra time and work.

This is something our elected leaders can and should fix. They would get a lot of brownie points from the populace for doing so.

I remember getting a possibly infected big toe while in Italy. A simple trip to La Farmacia, I showed my red, swollen toe to the pharmacist, and I had a tube of antibiotic ointment, and an offer of oral meds if the ointment did not do the trick. No need to see an doctor, PA, Nurse Practitioner or anybody else but the pharmacist. Fast and convenient. Thankfully I did not need the oral antibiotics, but I could easily have got them had the ointment not been effective. And I always had the option of visiting il dottore.

 

[disneysteve]

This sounds like a design problem

For sure. So much is wrong with our healthcare system. COVID has brought along a whole slew of new problems. The system simply wasn't equipped to deal with a national healthcare emergency of this magnitude and duration. Even more than 1-1/2 years into it, we're still playing catch up trying to figure out how best to handle the crush of patients needing care. It's far better than it was but much more needs to be done.


Our system would love to offload some of the testing burden from the urgent care sites. The problem is they have nobody to staff a stand alone testing center. They would have to "borrow" staff from office practices or the hospital or urgent care, all of which are already overwhelmed and short-staffed, so that wouldn't actually help anything. They're trying their best to recruit new employees but so is everyone else. There simply aren't enough people to go around to fill all of the open positions.

 

[braumeister]

MOD NOTE:
Again we had to delete posts. That shouldn't be necessary, but we remind you again, for the umpteenth time, that mask debates are absolutely off limits here.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

Do I think covid will ever end? Yes, someday, but I could not pinpoint a time. I am frustrated too, as it has screwed up a lot of my plans. But what can you do? It's the reality for the foreseeable future.

 

[marko]

IMO: (two Marts into the night)

You get vaccinated; immunity
You don't get vaccinated, get Covid and survive; immunity
You don't get vaccinated, get Covid and die

The virus more or less burns out, mutations become negligible/nuisance event like the common flu.
Give it time and it will be a memory.

Survival of the fittest. Welcome to the jungle.

 

[Koolau]

IMO: (two Marts into the night)

You get vaccinated; immunity
You don't get vaccinated, get Covid and survive; immunity
You don't get vaccinated, get Covid and die

The virus more or less burns out, mutations become negligible/nuisance event like the common flu.
Give it time and it will be a memory.

Survival of the fittest. Welcome to the jungle.

Sounds kind of like what happened in the 1918 pandemic - except they didn't have a vaccine. How lucky we are. YMMV

 

[marko]

Sounds kind of like what happened in the 1918 pandemic - except they didn't have a vaccine. How lucky we are. YMMV

30 or 40 years ago you'd see these 90 year old codgers who just wouldn't die. Tough old people. My belief is that the 1918 pandemic killed off the weaklings and these folk were just the survivors who made it through. The weaklings who would've died in their 60s or 70s (1960s - 1980s) never made it past 1918.

In a way 1918 made us stronger as a species. Everyone alive now had an ancestor who made it through that filter.
Most of us of European descent carry a gene of survival from the Black Plague.

 

[RobbieB]

Yup, Darwin wins again.

 

[USGrant1962]

30 or 40 years ago you'd see these 90 year old codgers who just wouldn't die. Tough old people. My belief is that the 1918 pandemic killed off the weaklings and these folk were just the survivors who made it through. The weaklings who would've died in their 60s or 70s (1960s - 1980s) never made it past 1918.

In a way 1918 made us stronger as a species. Everyone alive now had an ancestor who made it through that filter.
Most of us of European descent carry a gene of survival from the Black Plague.

Interesting observation, but I think it is the opposite with Covid-19. As I understand it the Spanish Flu was more severe in young people, whereas Covid-19 is certainly more severe in elderly people. Over 50% of all USA Covid deaths were >75 years old. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/

OTOH, the massive amount of young people either already exposed to Covid-19 or vaccinated suggests we are already "stronger as a species" against SARS-CoV-2.

 

[gayl]

OP--
No, I don't believe Covid will ever end, as in go away and never show up.

I believe by 2022-2023, as more of the World population is vaccinated and the disease wanes, it will become endemic like the influenza.......

I want a like button!![emoji106]

 

[Montecfo]

For sure. So much is wrong with our healthcare system. COVID has brought along a whole slew of new problems. The system simply wasn't equipped to deal with a national healthcare emergency of this magnitude and duration. Even more than 1-1/2 years into it, we're still playing catch up trying to figure out how best to handle the crush of patients needing care. It's far better than it was but much more needs to be done.


Our system would love to offload some of the testing burden from the urgent care sites. The problem is they have nobody to staff a stand alone testing center. They would have to "borrow" staff from office practices or the hospital or urgent care, all of which are already overwhelmed and short-staffed, so that wouldn't actually help anything. They're trying their best to recruit new employees but so is everyone else. There simply aren't enough people to go around to fill all of the open positions.

Well I agree that the system was not designed to deal with a pandemic. Why would we carry that excess capacity for a 100 year event?

So we should expect field hospitals, very busy ERs, and shortages when we have a pandemic. And we need plans for how to deal with a pandemic. Those plans and stockpiles were not replaced due to complacent government. This should not happen.

NJ still has just about the highest Covid death rate per Capita. You would think state health officials would begin figuring this stuff out by now.

 

[jollystomper]

I do not think it will die. At a certain point, one has to assess the tradeoffs one is willing to endure in life.

In addition, little is mentioned of the obesity epidemic... which is one of the leading factors in the severity of covid (not to mention other diseases). I see little effort in addressing this.

 

[tmm99]

I do not think it will die. At a certain point, one has to assess the tradeoffs one is willing to endure in life.

In addition, little is mentioned of the obesity epidemic... which is one of the leading factors in the severity of covid (not to mention other diseases). I see little effort in addressing this.

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice if they showed the BMI info or something similar as part of the stats for hospitalized patients?

 

[Koolau]

30 or 40 years ago you'd see these 90 year old codgers who just wouldn't die. Tough old people. My belief is that the 1918 pandemic killed off the weaklings and these folk were just the survivors who made it through. The weaklings who would've died in their 60s or 70s (1960s - 1980s) never made it past 1918.

In a way 1918 made us stronger as a species. Everyone alive now had an ancestor who made it through that filter.
Most of us of European descent carry a gene of survival from the Black Plague.

Yeah, my mom got the Spanish flu at age 6 - she barely survived. She died at 87 due to effects of smoking. YMMV

 

[EastWest Gal]

IMO: (two Marts into the night)

You get vaccinated; immunity
You don't get vaccinated, get Covid and survive; immunity
You don't get vaccinated, get Covid and die

The virus more or less burns out, mutations become negligible/nuisance event like the common flu.
Give it time and it will be a memory.

Survival of the fittest. Welcome to the jungle.

You left out:
You don’t get vaccinated, get Covid, and survive, but have kidney damage and have a shortened life span/lung damage and are short of breath/heart damage/diabetes and are insulin-dependent/have an amputation or two/brain fog—and can’t work.

For those folks it won’t be just a memory.

 

[marko]

You left out:
You don’t get vaccinated, get Covid, and survive, but have kidney damage and have a shortened life span/lung damage and are short of breath/heart damage/diabetes and are insulin-dependent/have an amputation or two/brain fog—and can’t work.
.

That was kind of implied within the "get Covid and die" category. I should added: "....or wish you had died".

But the comment was about the virus burning out and even those unfortunates who survive badly (most survive just fine) now have immunity and are contributing to the burnout.

 

[EastWest Gal]

That was kind of implied within the "get Covid and die" category. I should added: "....or wish you had died", but most who survive (the many I know) are just fine.

+1. I know two younger people with residual effects. One is short of breath on exertion. Another is too weak to work. But most fully recover.

 

[anethum]

Well I agree that the system was not designed to deal with a pandemic. Why would we carry that excess capacity for a 100 year event?

So we should expect field hospitals, very busy ERs, and shortages when we have a pandemic. And we need plans for how to deal with a pandemic. Those plans and stockpiles were not replaced due to complacent government. This should not happen.

NJ still has just about the highest Covid death rate per Capita. You would think state health officials would begin figuring this stuff out by now.

<emphasis mine>

NJ has a high death rate due to its very high infection rate, particularly in nursing homes, at the beginning of the pandemic. Seniors, as we know, are most likely to die from Covid, and effective treatments had not been developed yet. So deaths spiked in NJ at the very beginning of the pandemic. You should not be blaming state health officials.

Now, NJ has a high vaccination rate and one of the lowest per capita death rates in the nation, so perhaps you should be praising state health officials there.

 

[marko]

Interesting observation, but I think it is the opposite with Covid-19. As I understand it the Spanish Flu was more severe in young people,

Right. But if you were an old person and survived 1918, you died in 1930-1945 of natural causes.

If you were young in 1918 and survived, you were one tough bird and went on (like my grandad who drank, smoked, didnt' take care of himself and died at 93) and became one of those old people 'you can't kill' I mentioned.