I'm angry Covid-19.

[CrazyCatLover]

Two months ago, China announced that SARS-cov-2 (the virus which causes Covid-19) was airborne. That's the most dangerous type of spread, and it requires the strictest isolation protocols in hospital. We don't have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) or ventilators or isolation rooms to deal with an airborne pandemic. So the CDC insisted it was droplet which requires less PPE. They made this recommendation based not on science but on supplies. When we ran out of surgical masks, they recommended bandannas despite a mountain of evidence showing that those actually increase the spread of infection.

 

The CDC is basing its recommendations off of supplies. It should be basing its recommendations off of the best availible evidence. Let supply chains work out the rest. I don't feel like I can recommend the CDC as a reliable source anymore.

 

I just turned in my last assignment for nursing school. In less than a week, I'll be licensed. I've been watching nursing groups posts with horror. We don't have the proper PPE (personal protective equipment) to protect healthcare workers. There's a memorial in China to healthcare workers who died in the fight against SARS-cov-1. There will be memorials worldwide for healthcare workers who died fighting SARS-cov-2 (the current coronavirus). It might be selfish, but I don't want to be on that memorial. We need PPE to protect our healthcare providers and ventilators to save as many patients as possible. 

[Rosendust]

Spoiler

Covid definitely has spoiled a lot of things for me, but the top two things it's destroyed for me is that (I've been working towards my degree for being a paralegal) and I only have 4 more courses left, but problem is, I do not do distance learning. So, the second thing is that my SO's a Fed-ex driver & he's been met with horrible customers and such, and it's really disheartening. 

 

[- Saph -]

I get your point. The virus can be inhaled through aerosols. In a crowded room the smallest droplets can remain in the air for a while. However as droplets are small they dessicate and the virus they contain may no longer be viable. There are more tests needed for science. So based on limited information it is only a question of feasible risk management. Non-FFP2 masks worn the right way are better than nothing really. It could reduce maybe 40% instead of 95% contamination (inventing out figures here).

2 hours ago, CrazyCatLover said:

The CDC is basing its recommendations off of supplies. It should be basing its recommendations off of the best availible evidence. Let supply chains work out the rest. I don't feel like I can recommend the CDC as a reliable source anymore.

I don't know exactly which public health mission has the CDC but they act more political than expert based.

In my opinion, experts can provide alarming facts that can cause panic in the general population. This does worse than better if wrongly communicated. By pointing CDC as the place to go for the general population they force them to consider psychology of the crowds in the way they communicate. I will give an example and a personal rant on masks.

Spoiler

In our country there is a shortage of masks, even simple surgical ones. When the virus was announced as airborne, some people started massively buying masks and stealing masks in hospitals and industry. We are in free trade (capitalism I love you) and not in a dictatorship. Some suppliers saw an opportunity (specially Chinese ones through the internet) and some distributors were eager to speculate on health. As a result the general public could interfere with professional supply chains. The Government had to announce publicly that masks protected less agains the virus than washing your hands. I can't say that it was totally wrong because I know that PPEs are all about how you wear them. People started to donate masks (back) to hospitals. Now as many countries we are just checking at customs and getting the masks that are passing on the territory. At work I wear FFP3 facepieces (out of stock since long ago) yet this is what I do during the confinement: https://makefacemasks.com/  I do this to protect other random strangers when I have to go shopping. But also do this for the marginal protection that it can bring to myself, my family, my close friends. Unfortunately these handmade masks are also used by some health professionals that don't even have surgical masks anymore.

 

I'm also disappointed with the official sources but for other reasons. I think that they don't update their conclusions quickly enough after the scientifical developments.

Also they should definitely look at the Chinese input with a grain of salt *cought* WHO *cought*: the figure reported are unrealistically low. As I say, wrong data + good analysis + no incertitude due to political trust = wrong conclusions. This has bad consequences on public health abroad. I don't want to excuse any politician for being late or lenient but the infectiosity and lethality may have been underestimated.

 

It is your choice not have your first experience in this turnmoil. There are many reasons not to go ahead. A crisis like this may be unprecedented but in my country the situation in healthcare has always been savings savings savings. It may be the same in the US public sector. Once decided don't worry too much about it. If you are still motivated, the health system will need nurses after the crisis to treat all (other) patients too.

[Guest]

I'm disappointed in a lot of things. Like, the fact that 20 states are still not in lock down. And the fact Florida's governor signed a lock down order and then signed a second bill to override it, allowing mass gatherings for things like churches ... like, seriously. All those churches can do their stuff online, God won't mind if you listen in from home to the pastor. And then thousands won't get infected while gathering at church and spread it around. 

[Howard]

I've seen strange things in my parts of the world also. The provincial government gave directives to desinfect PPE. Two days later, I just found out that in the next province, they just found out how to desinfect equipment that are disposable. What happened during the two days between the government's directives and the day they found out how to go about it in the next province is beyond me.

[Guest]

I’m worried too. I’m newly qualified and In a few weeks, I’m due to start work in a hospital with 500 confirmed cases. I’m not banking on having the PPE I need to work with Covid-19 patients. I’m absolutely terrified of starting, not because of the virus but because I’m worried that I won’t get the post qualifying support I would receive if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic.

[thylacine]

A total failure to get prepared for this disaster.  We could have reacted a lot sooner to be ready for this.  Oh well, everybody just stay safe and don't get sick.

[Tabula Rasa]

@CrazyCatLover by airborne, do you mean purely airborne, as in it's totally inescapable? I'm no scientist but I'm wondering if Covid-19 is saturating the atmosphere to the point where literally everyone on the planet will get it within the next year.

[Zectarash]

1 hour ago, Tabula Rasa said:

@CrazyCatLover by airborne, do you mean purely airborne, as in it's totally inescapable? I'm no scientist but I'm wondering if Covid-19 is saturating the atmosphere to the point where literally everyone on the planet will get it within the next year.

Also not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that viruses don't have that long a life span ("lives" in the weird way that viruses are considered "alive"). I think it was the CDC that was saying it lives for up to a week or something on hard surfaces, and way, way less on soft ones. Even if those figures are on the optimistic side, I wouldn't worry about the whole planet getting saturated.

 

Edit: Don't take my figures as a reliable source, check the exact ones!

[Guest]

Just to be clear, airborne transmission (i.e. via aerosols rather than water droplets) has not yet been truly confirmed. Here's a good summary of the current understanding from a highly reliable resource: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00974-w

 

4 hours ago, Tabula Rasa said:

@CrazyCatLover by airborne, do you mean purely airborne, as in it's totally inescapable? I'm no scientist but I'm wondering if Covid-19 is saturating the atmosphere to the point where literally everyone on the planet will get it within the next year.

No, even if the virus is airborne that is not possible, the virus cannot survive for long or replicate outside of living cells. However in poorly ventilated rooms it can be an issue, which is why some scientists are advising opening windows if you have to share space with other people at work.

[Guest]

The 2020 NCLEX / OSCEs be like:

 

 

[CrazyCatLover]

On 4/3/2020 at 8:38 PM, Tabula Rasa said:

@CrazyCatLover by airborne, do you mean purely airborne, as in it's totally inescapable? I'm no scientist but I'm wondering if Covid-19 is saturating the atmosphere to the point where literally everyone on the planet will get it within the next year.

No, it's not that bad. Droplet transmission means that a virus is spread by droplets (usually from a sneeze) that become inactive fairly quickly once they're outside the human body. To get sick, you basically need to have one of these droplets come in contact with a mucus membrane (most common: mouth, nose, eyes, ears) while the virus is still viable. Surgical masks protect against them. Airbone transmission, on the other hand, are very tiny particles (tiny enough to get around a surgical mask but not an n95 mask) are released when someone breathes and linger in the air, viable to transmit, for several hours. They also need to come in contact with a mucus membrane while viable, but have much larger window of opportunity than droplets. Simply put, airborne is much more contagious than droplet. 

[Tabula Rasa]

8 minutes ago, CrazyCatLover said:

No, it's not that bad. Droplet transmission means that a virus is spread by droplets (usually from a sneeze) that become inactive fairly quickly once they're outside the human body. To get sick, you basically need to have one of these droplets come in contact with a mucus membrane (most common: mouth, nose, eyes, ears) while the virus is still viable. Surgical masks protect against them. Airbone transmission, on the other hand, are very tiny particles (tiny enough to get around a surgical mask but not an n95 mask) are released when someone breathes and linger in the air, viable to transmit, for several hours. They also need to come in contact with a mucus membrane while viable, but have much larger window of opportunity than droplets. Simply put, airborne is much more contagious than droplet. 

Okay. Thanks.

 

Today at work someone across the aisle from me sneezed messily. Our desks are more than 6 ft. apart. I got up and left my desk for a few minutes. Then I returned, gathered my things, and left for the day because my anxiety got the best of me. That person might have just had allergies, but I also kept in mind they may be asymptomatic regarding the virus.

I hope they're okay and I'm okay.