- Joined
- Oct 13, 2010
- Messages
- 10,763
Many books will be written once all of this is history, and I wonder what they'll say about the effectiveness of our healthcare system in this first wave, when our healthcare's arsenal against the virus is pretty much empty.
To be clear, I don't see anyone or any group is doing anything "wrong". Everyone is doing what they can, and I honor them for it. It seems to me that they simply don't have highly effective tools at their disposal at the moment.
I haven't even researched the current standard treatments and protocols used at hospitals around the world, but just going by what I read on this board, it sounds like hospitals are trying that hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin thing, maybe they're giving IV fluids, and, of course, they can knock you out and put you on a ventilator (which basically means you've likely lost the battle). There are other things being done at various hospitals, even using fomentation, but right now, hospitals don't seem to have any "really good" remedies.
This is not to take anything away from our brave hospital workers; it's essential for people to have somewhere to go and to have someone to take care for you if you get very sick. But I wonder, when this is in the history books, what they'll say about the effectiveness of the healthcare systems around the world during this span of time of the pandemic, before a really effective treatment is available.
I see some 'natural experiments' cropping up when a certain geography has more cases than hospitals can manage. The hospitals do triage between cases and take the ones they think they can help the most, but there's probably going to be situations where a certain uniform cohort is too large to admit all of them, so they take a subset. I haven't paid too much attention to specific cases where the curve wasn't flat enough and this kind of selective application of hospital care had to be undertaken, but I imagine the data is already collected. Not that anybody wants or needs to talk about it now, in the midst of the crisis, which is why I'm not sure this is even a good thing to talk about right now.
What I wonder is "How much more survivable is the disease if admitted to a hospital when compared to staying at home". The numbers, as reflected upon in the future, will show this. Obviously, it will vary, hospital to hospital. But I wonder about it today. Am I twice as likely to survive if I get admitted vs getting turned away. Ten times? Or is it even odds? I really have no clue, but my feeling is that it's closer to even odds than it is to ten times.
To be clear, I don't see anyone or any group is doing anything "wrong". Everyone is doing what they can, and I honor them for it. It seems to me that they simply don't have highly effective tools at their disposal at the moment.
I haven't even researched the current standard treatments and protocols used at hospitals around the world, but just going by what I read on this board, it sounds like hospitals are trying that hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin thing, maybe they're giving IV fluids, and, of course, they can knock you out and put you on a ventilator (which basically means you've likely lost the battle). There are other things being done at various hospitals, even using fomentation, but right now, hospitals don't seem to have any "really good" remedies.
This is not to take anything away from our brave hospital workers; it's essential for people to have somewhere to go and to have someone to take care for you if you get very sick. But I wonder, when this is in the history books, what they'll say about the effectiveness of the healthcare systems around the world during this span of time of the pandemic, before a really effective treatment is available.
I see some 'natural experiments' cropping up when a certain geography has more cases than hospitals can manage. The hospitals do triage between cases and take the ones they think they can help the most, but there's probably going to be situations where a certain uniform cohort is too large to admit all of them, so they take a subset. I haven't paid too much attention to specific cases where the curve wasn't flat enough and this kind of selective application of hospital care had to be undertaken, but I imagine the data is already collected. Not that anybody wants or needs to talk about it now, in the midst of the crisis, which is why I'm not sure this is even a good thing to talk about right now.
What I wonder is "How much more survivable is the disease if admitted to a hospital when compared to staying at home". The numbers, as reflected upon in the future, will show this. Obviously, it will vary, hospital to hospital. But I wonder about it today. Am I twice as likely to survive if I get admitted vs getting turned away. Ten times? Or is it even odds? I really have no clue, but my feeling is that it's closer to even odds than it is to ten times.