People are staying home and dying. This is one of the major trade offs no government official is talking about regarding re-opening the economy.
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?
#32Are 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).
To echo your point:
In New South Wales, Australia the medical sector had 1000 ICU bed capacity in January. When covid hit, it was rapidly expanded and currently over 2000 ICU beds are available.
At the same time all elective surgeries got banned (e.g. hip replacements etc) because some of those would end up in ICU.
At the peak of the outbreak NSW used 100 of those 2000 beds. Currently only about two dozen ICU beds are occupied. About 1% of capacity.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#33This pandemic will surely produce a lot of material for economists and social scientists who study the law of unintended consequences.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#34Are 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).
No, it doesn't mean "stop sheltering in place," unless cases of COVID-19 have peaked. In order to tell whether they've peaked, you need testing in place, as well. Even if they have peaked, it could mean "relax some of the restrictions, but not fully end SIP, while monitoring cases." Opening things back up prematurely, without sufficient testing, is just going to get people killed.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#35Dying 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.
Possibly in the short term - in the long term the quarantine is likely going to increase heart disease due to people having more sedentary life styles... It's quite likely this is just a result of the math of going to a hospital shifting - a lot of folks decide not to go to the hospital with minor chest pain due to other obligations[1] and the addition of the outbreak likely adds to the reasons not to go to the hospital.
1. Don't do this, go to the hospital if you feel something different in your chest.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#36It'd be interesting if the quarantine from the coronavirus has also quarantined us from the ravages and stresses of day to day life, leading to improved cardiovascular outcomes. I'd be curious about suicide statistics as well--would they be going up or down right now?
Suicide helpline calls are up about 50% from early reports.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#37People are staying home and dying. This is one of the major trade offs no government official is talking about regarding re-opening the economy.
How is that related to the lockdown? Hospitals are open. People are staying home because they're scared of getting sick, that's not something that can be fixed by public policy.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#38Don'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.
Why do you think that the effect is only long term exposure?
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#39There 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…
Similar happened to friend a week ago, he sailed right in instead of the hour or more wait he expected.
Not giving details, but he turned out to be just fine.
Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?
#40There 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.
24 hour urgent care would reduce the load on ERs.