> That's really one of the tragedies of COVID-19
More like one of the tragedies of fearmongering.
Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
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Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#22Don't discount the impact of reduction of air pollution on all causes of mortality. It's not often discussed, but every so often someone makes the connection between small particulates and heart attacks, etc.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#23There is also another opinion: that many people go to the ER who don't really need to go there. I had to visit the ER recently. I did not want to go but my doctor insisted. A family member who is also a doctor also insisted I go. The ER was eerily empty. The ER doctor saw me immediately. There were only a couple of other patients that I could see. This contrasts to prior experiences in the ER where there is a long wa…
My wife is a doctor. Not an ER doc, but had to do rotations through the ER and frequently interacts with the ER in other rotations.
The amount of non-emergencies the ER department sees is astounding.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#24Are just the ERs empty? Or the whole hospital as well? If hospitals are empty, it's time to stop sheltering in place, because it means it's working too well. What's the endgame? We can't just keep the country shut down indefinitely. Life must move on. Even though there's still a lot of fear, I think reopening the country is the best option (while still maintaining social distancing, etc).
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fairly sure the country as a whole is more stressed. Economy and media at least portray that.
But fewer externalities like bars, parties, stupid accidents with friends, rushing to meetings, traffic, physical work env stress, in some cases work altogether. Not to minimize the mental torment some people feel but I think o there is a huge reduction in certain kinds of stress.
Here's some context: both you, me and a majority of HN readers have decent lives and cushy tech jobs (I'm a student and have the luxury of coding all day).
Think of everyone else: those relatively regular/average people in America, the average Joe. They have bills to pay for, but living paycheck to paycheck, they can't pay any of it. So now they're seeing whats the best way to get income. Unemployment check? Website is down. Where to get food? Food banks are barely sustaining.
Yes, there's definitely a reduction of stress in some areas, but I believe that thinking of everyone, I mean everyone not just in tech, makes you realize that as a whole, a lot of people are stressed out of their minds when this can end.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#26There is also another opinion: that many people go to the ER who don't really need to go there. I had to visit the ER recently. I did not want to go but my doctor insisted. A family member who is also a doctor also insisted I go. The ER was eerily empty. The ER doctor saw me immediately. There were only a couple of other patients that I could see. This contrasts to prior experiences in the ER where there is a long wa…
You not have overlooked these details when you read the article: > One study collected data from nine hospitals across the country, focusing on a crucial procedure used to reopen a blocked cardiac artery after a heart attack. The hospitals performed 38% fewer of those procedures in March, compared with previous months. > At Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Dr. Malveeka Sharma has tracked a 60% decline in stroke…
There's one obvious possibility... there's some evidence that flu triggers heart attacks in people already at risk for one, Covid-19 also seems to do the same, lockdowns have cut short the flu season but are less effective against Covid-19, and I've seen suggestions elsewhere that doctors are refusing to even consider doing this kind of procedure on people who test positive for Covid-19. It's possible the heart attack patients are right there in the hospitals dying untreated.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article addresses this. They expect fewer trauma patients as there are fewer people on the road, etc. but they expect the number of stroke, heart attack, etc. patients to remain constant, which hasn't been the case.
The article doesn't address the opinion that my doctor relative expressed: there were a lot of ER visits, not trauma related, that probably didn't need to happen.
Strokes and heart attacks don’t fall into they category.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#28Don't discount the impact of reduction of air pollution on all causes of mortality. It's not often discussed, but every so often someone makes the connection between small particulates and heart attacks, etc.
Pretty sure any impact from that would be a very long-term thing. A lifetime without particulates might have an effect; a month seems pretty far-fetched.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#29Dying at home, many of them. Excess mortality is way up, and it’s not all COVID-19: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/patients-with-heart-at... > The possibility that patients may be suffering — and even dying — at home rather than going to a hospital led the American College of Cardiology to launch a “Cardiosmart” campaign last week, attempting to reassure a wary population and encourage those with symptoms to c…
Could relaxing still home and cooking your own meals reduce activity-causing heart attacks? It’s a trope in the North-East that middle aged men die shoveling snow.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article addresses this. They expect fewer trauma patients as there are fewer people on the road, etc. but they expect the number of stroke, heart attack, etc. patients to remain constant, which hasn't been the case.
The article doesn't address the opinion that my doctor relative expressed: there were a lot of ER visits, not trauma related, that probably didn't need to happen.
But, of the normal ER visits, one would expect to have the same scalar number of emergency (stroke, heart attack) visits to STILL be happening, and we would expect those people to still be going to the ER. These are not "no insurance" people, they're people having an emergency situation.
If we don't see them in the ER, it makes sense that they're staying home on purpose, or not handling symptoms until it's too late (?).