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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?

#191

Post by roca »

newacct583 wrote: post #186
roca wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really answer what containment means or what the long-term strategy is. If you relax lockdowns while you still have a significant number of active cases then expect outbreaks to reoccur. So is the plan to stay locked down until active cases in the applicable area are essentially zero, i.e. eradication? If so, how long will that take? If not, what is the plan? I know there's no easy solution here but even…

This stuff has been written about ad nauseum. Every think tank has some variant they've published. Here's Ezra Klein's review of a bunch of them (he's pretty bearish on whether they'll work): https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215494/coronavirus-plans-soc... The basic idea is that you stay locked down until the outbreak size is small enough that you can test every contact of every positive case to catch them before they…

Yes, lots of experts have plans. But it's not clear what the California state strategy is, nor most of those other countries you mentioned earlier, and they're the ones who make the rules.

I agree with everything else you say. Except calling my representative won't help because I'm not American and I already know what the NZ strategy is...

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#192

Post by _y5hn »

WalterSear wrote: post #161
hombre_fatal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, amazes me how many people think everyone is just relaxing at home playing Animal Crossing with paid time off wondering why we can't stay in quarantine indefinitely.

This country absolutely has the resources necessary to shelter in place as long as is required. However, it lacks the political will to do so.

No country avoids lockdown. It happens controlled or uncontrolled. When control is back, everyone open up again. Nobody wants these adverse side-effects, and that they may be worse than the virus is nothing new. Our plight as society is find ways to cope with it and prepare better.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#193

Post by _y5hn »

umvi wrote: post #182
pmiller2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan? Not well: > There are just five ICU beds per 100,000 people in Japan, less than half the number in Italy, and doctors' associations have warned that hospitals are already stretched thin. [0] I notice you skipped South Korea. What stopped it there? Glad you are admitting your own ignorance. Now, if you would just listen to the people who do know a little something about viral epidemics and their containment, yo…

> I notice you skipped South Korea. What stopped it there? South Korea is anomalous. Has literally any other country been able to replicate their success? > Glad you are admitting your own ignorance. Now, if you would just listen to the people who do know a little something about viral epidemics and their containment, you could cure that little condition. Containment/minimizing covid-19 deaths is a very short-sighted…

Taiwan. And your reasoning is just plain wrong. Measures bring R well below 1, that together with broad testing is when you start opening up.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#194

Post by _y5hn »

postalrat wrote: post #153
pmiller2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's entirely avoidable. I'm referring to unnecessary deaths from COVID-19, which, as we've seen here in California, and the Bay Area specifically, have not hit numbers suggested by initial models because we implemented shelter in place. I don't see anything more to your argument than what the woman standing with a sign saying "I want a haircut" is saying. Your attitude is dangerous. People will die unnecessarily…

Are you willing at all to consider the models were flawed and shelter in place is only delaying deaths a few months?

Are you willing to educate yourself about R?

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#195

Post by _y5hn »

_bxg1 wrote: post #51
pmorici wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that the effect is only long term exposure?

Seems like a pretty subtle and non-acute thing. Maybe even analogous to smoking: something that gradually erodes your health, not something that suddenly kills you.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/tobacco-and-canc...

Risks are generally thought to be immediate, but very low.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#196

Post by makomk »

abalone wrote: post #75
makomk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 attac…

Except stroke admissions are way down too. No obvious link between the flu and strokes.

Stroke patients are definitely just leaving it far too late to seek treatment. It's been happening in multiple countries. There was even an unfortunate New York Times article where a doctor talked about seeing strokes of a severity they wouldn't expect in people so young, which was spun as proof the coronavirus was causing the strokes - and it just happened to mention in passing that those patients had ignored their symptoms and taken far longer than usual to seek treatment. Of course, if coronavirus was causing strokes we'd expect an increase in stroke patients rather than a decrease.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#197

Post by zenexer »

mirimir wrote: post #118
zenexer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not being counted as COVID-19 deaths; they’re not being counted at all . A lot of people are living in isolation right now, often with no regular contact with the outside world. The sad truth is that there are probably a lot of people lying dead in their homes right now, and they could go unnoticed for months.

Woah, I didn't think of that. I know that it happens, for those without close friends and family. But for many, the first clue has been failure to report for work. Which doesn't happen so much now. And it's eerie to think that it's become far more common.

Indeed. People aren’t working, aren’t seeing friends/family, and don’t have regular appointments. For many of us, if we died tomorrow, it’d take a while before anyone noticed. I have no idea how many of my friends are still alive; I assume most are fine because they're young, but I’ve lost contact with most of the people I normally see on a daily or weekly basis.

When we come out of this, who will be left behind? And how many of those lives could’ve been saved if we weren’t in quarantine? That’s not to say the quarantine isn’t necessary, but it’s an important question to ask, as its a significant cost that isn’t obvious.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#198

Post by wiether »

zenexer wrote: post #197
mirimir wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, I didn't think of that. I know that it happens, for those without close friends and family. But for many, the first clue has been failure to report for work. Which doesn't happen so much now. And it's eerie to think that it's become far more common.

Indeed. People aren’t working, aren’t seeing friends/family, and don’t have regular appointments. For many of us, if we died tomorrow, it’d take a while before anyone noticed. I have no idea how many of my friends are still alive; I assume most are fine because they're young, but I’ve lost contact with most of the people I normally see on a daily or weekly basis. When we come out of this, who will be left behind? And…

> I have no idea how many of my friends are still alive

Where do you live ? They don't have phone or Internet ?

I exchange daily with every people I call friend; I exchange daily with my close family; I exchange weekly with the rest of my family and people I don't consider friends but still care about.

I'm not a health worker nor someone working in something that matters and I have the luck to still be able to work from home so I've seen as my duty to make sure everyone I care about doesn't feel abandoned and is okay.

I'm not judging or anything but it seems odd to me to call someone a friend and still don't make anything possible to be sure they're safe in those dark times.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#199

Post by dividedbyzero »

JackFr wrote: post #83
dividedbyzero wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mental stress level is wayyy up – but I think I still feel less stressed overall, because I get more and better exercise, I cook a lot more and that means cheaper but somewhat healthier food on a schedule that better suits me in portion sizes that I choose myself (as opposed to the guy at the cafeteria counter), I have a lot less work-related stress due to remote work (everything feels somewhat more distant), no s…

You sound a lot like a person who’s never been evicted.

That's true, I live in Europe, eviction is something that the social safety net in our country protects people against very well. That may mean the overall stress levels over here are lower, can't say. ER doctors are making the same observation here though – heart attacks have plummetted. I guess personally I'm better off than many, since my job can be done from home; what I currently do is very much a nice-to-have for the people who pay me though, other options to pivot to are few, and I wouldn't last long in a bad recession if I were out of a job, with rent that would quickly become a problem even with the security net we have here, so that's definitely something that stresses me. Whether that's enough for the argument I'm making, can't say.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#200

Post by koffiezet »

trhway wrote: post #7

[IANAD] Diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular issues are among the frequent issues in serious covid cases. If covid is that widespread as some studies suggests, may it be that covid triggers the hospitalization earlier than the heart attack/stroke/etc. would have happened to that person otherwise. US heart attack rate is 2K/day, ie. on a scale of covid deaths and significantly less than covid hospitalizations. So…

I would assume indeed that your first point is the most important-one: people already in bad health, susceptible to heart attacks and strokes also have a much higher chance of getting seriously affected by covid with fatal consequences in the first place.

This is also something you see in statistics, that after any large flu epidemic, the general population mortality figure drops to something significantly below average, especially for people in the 65+ age group.

You can see this very well on EuroMOMO [1] - check out the numbers for the Netherlands in 2018 from week 10 throughout 13. This is a flu epidemic there, and the aftermath.

[1] https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

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