Or, because the vast number of people staying home, physical distancing, is leading to a reduction in people getting infected.... maybe?
I don't know.... nearly 13,000 deaths in less than four months from a new disease.... "Bad" is relative I guess.
We all know that's already happened.
Flattening, getting caught up, manufacturing... but yeah, it's getting better.
Let me also say this: There are different points of view on COVID19, through the eyes of:
General public - outside looking in as they watch Netflix, tired of being at home
EMS - transporting cases to the hospital (vast majority are self transporting)
Police - non healthcare workers that out among the public all day every day
Hospital - packed EDs, lack of PPE, lack of training and preparation
Public health - not enough staff to investigate all of these cases
etc
And I'll add this before I climb back up my tree...
Society has a way of measuring how bad something is by the number of deaths. Hurricanes, tornadoes, flu seasons, pandemic outbreaks, etc. They don't see the daily toll it takes on those who are injured, ill, or those on the front lines. We are different because we are on the front lines, but sometimes we become jaded too.
Hang in there. We're all affected by this differently.
It's not being jaded, it's having a real perspective.
Do you know how many people across the world die from rotovirus every year? It's about half a million.
Flu kills well over a half million every year.
Add in all of the deaths from malaria, dengue fever, RSV, human metapeumo, para flu, h flu, CMV, rabies, small pox, measles, cholera, e coli, coxsackie, viral hepatitis, and the myriad of other mosquito borne illness and you are well in the millions.
There are two things very unique that complicate social impact of COVID 19.
One is that we have no reliable statistical model. Likely there is somewhere in the realm of at least 2-10 times the number of reported infections. This means that we are far beyond any real possibility of containment, it is now going to be a perenial community human reservoired disease just like flu or RSV. It also likely has a fatality rate that is 5-10% of what is currently published.
Two is that unlike most modern infectious diseases this has been just as deadly to first world countries and there isn't a lot we can do about it. Some patients get better with supportive care, but that's the same essentially every infectious disease. Any of the current experimental treatments like plaquenil and transfusions at this point are just that, and the current data is entirely anecdotal. I have little ability to reasonably project any disease course to my patients.
Also, people seem to be amazed by the things that good ICUs, PICUs, and NICUs have been doing for a long time. Things like lung protective ventilation, proning, and fluid sparing resuscitation are not new. Proactive intubation is not new. Running high pressures on a conventional vent is not new.
