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On 3/31/20 5:04 AM, RKOB via Marxism wrote:
SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data
A new scientific study to appear in: International Journal of
Antimicrobial Agents
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300972
All of these articles that make the death rate the overriding statistic
are missing an essential point. Getting sick is a whole order of
magnitude more devastating than any flu I've heard of. I say that as
someone who was sick with the flu in 1964, 1968 and 1973.
NY Times, March 27, 2020
I Am Hospitalized With the Coronavirus
As a generally healthy 45-year-old, I didn’t seem like a probable
Covid-19 candidate.
By Jeremy Egner
Mr. Egner is the television editor for The Times.
On March 12 I got a fever that didn’t go away.
It hovered around 101 or 102 degrees for the next week, accompanied by
severe fatigue and body aches. My office was already working remotely,
so I powered through and kept at it, with lots of breaks and naps. I saw
a doctor via video who said it was probably the flu — possibly the
coronavirus, he added, but tests were unavailable and the prescription,
rest and fluids, would be the same regardless.
I naturally worried about the coronavirus, but I didn’t have respiratory
symptoms. I’m also a 45-year-old, generally healthy nonsmoker (I quit
years ago) with none of the high-risk conditions listed by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. I didn’t seem like a probable
Covid-19 candidate.
Then, about a week in, I began to cough. Taking deep breaths felt as if
fire were shooting through my lungs. My primary care doctor, with whom I
also consulted via video, thought it was pneumonia and prescribed a
course of antibiotics. New York State set up a coronavirus testing site
an hour from my home. When I called for an appointment, I waited on hold
for 80 minutes, after which someone took my information and said someone
else would call me back. No one did.
Eight days after the fever first manifested, I could barely move. My
wife took me to an urgent care clinic, where I received a chest X-ray
and confirmation that I had pneumonia. They swabbed me for the
coronavirus but their lab was overwhelmed, and they didn’t know when
they would receive any results. I’ve still not heard from them.
I returned home in terrible shape, chest burning and wracked with
chills, unable to do anything other than shudder under a blanket. My
primary doctor urged my wife to take me to the E.R., which she did.
There, they gave me a coronavirus test and another chest X-ray, but
blood tests suggested that my oxygen and white blood cell levels were
decent. They sent me home but insisted that should I feel worse, I
should call them back immediately.
The next day, my temperature spiked to 103.5 degrees. We called the
E.R., and they told us to come back. That night I was admitted to
Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, N.Y.
The first night and day were a literal fever-dream of pricks, prods,
scans and sweat. I floated in and out of consciousness and
hallucinations as nurses drew blood from all over and gave me shots of
blood thinner in my stomach, which became a daily routine. Someone took
another chest X-ray.
On the second day I was more lucid but still felt horrendous, and a
friendly doctor came in with two bits of news: The coronavirus test I
took in the E.R. had come back positive and the latest X-ray wasn’t
good. He showed me the earlier X-ray from the E.R.: Each lung had a
cloudy patch near the bottom but was otherwise clear. Then he showed me
the new X-ray. It looked liked some demented handyman had sprayed my
lungs with insulation.
It was one of the bleakest moments of the ordeal, surpassed only by the
moment when I wondered, as I hugged my 9-year-old daughter goodbye on
the way to the hospital, if I would ever hug her again.
My doctor said we’d stay the course and perhaps add another antibiotic
to the mix. But if things didn’t start to turn around soon, he added, I
would need to move into the intensive care unit. I lay back, utterly
dispirited, and turned on the TV. It was on CNN. President Trump was
telling someone he wanted to reopen the country by Easter.
A few weeks ago I would have rolled my eyes and made a joke about how he
should socially distance himself on some Mar-a-Lago golf course. Just go
away and let the adults figure things out.
But my experience has made this pandemic much less abstract, and left me
in no mood for jokes. I’m writing this from my hospital bed in
Rhinebeck, on Day 14 of my Covid-pneumonia saga.
It has been miserable in general, with spikes of both awful physical
pain and real terror, given the uncertainties that still surround the
disease and its outcomes. I think of my wife and daughter every minute.
But I also feel humbled and awed by the care I’ve received from nurses,
doctors, technicians, cleaning and food staff members, all of them
strangers who risk getting this disease every time they come in to help
me, which they do over and over, day after day, with good cheer and
expertise. It is heroic and moving.
Every time the president minimizes this crisis, he is making these
people’s lives more difficult. When he makes the pandemic seem less
serious than it is, he gives those inclined to disregard it license to
do so.
The virus doesn’t care about political talking points. Fewer precautions
taken across the country will result in more patients. Which means that
the people now helping me, and the thousands like them all over the
nation, will soon have more patients than they can handle. These people
— who are leaving their own families behind every day to help other
people’s mothers, fathers, children and grandparents — will be asked to
do even more.
For me, things did start to turn around as the drugs did their work. My
fever broke a day ago and my most recent chest X-ray shows signs of
improvement. I am feeling better. I feel confident that I will hug my
wife and daughter again, even though plenty of quarantining will remain
for each of us — their health has been fine, thankfully — after I am
discharged. I know how fortunate I am, thanks to the support of my
family, friends and employer — and most crucially, having health
insurance. I also know the country has only begun to contend with this
crisis.
I’m also lucky to have had such excellent caretakers, who help me sit up
and eat and bathe and rest and heal, all the while telling me how much
they are praying for me. We cannot do enough for these people, who are
selflessly performing the world’s most important work. They are saving
our lives. They have saved mine.
As this crisis intensifies, we must think about how to make their lives
easier, whether through direct bonus payments, student loan and debt
forgiveness, free groceries, free child care or all of the above (or
something else entirely). We must mobilize American industry to expand
our medical infrastructure. People are conducting sewing drives to make
masks for health care workers. That’s sweet and noble, but why aren’t
companies like Procter & Gamble churning them out by the millions? I saw
a TV ad that said Ford will work with lessees affected by the
coronavirus. Great. Now why don’t you get going on a few hundred
thousand ventilators?
And of course, we must expand testing as rapidly as possible.
This is a national health emergency, and we must treat it with the
seriousness it deserves. We must listen to the health professionals. And
we must do everything we can to help them save us.
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