Hey everyone. Been lurking for years and rarely post. This is my is my 4th and hope it's worthwhile. I'm in the medical field and thought I would post at least something about the whole COVID thing. My last post was about blood clots and whoever might be interested can take a look if they care. If you don't care, that's fine too.
Anyway, there's a virus going around. The name of the virus is "Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)". If you get it and develop problems, the problems are referred to as "Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)." Some people have been completely minimizing this virus and other people have been overblowing it. If you catch the virus, the likelihood of dying is, on average, anywhere from the single digits to somewhere below 1%. The likelihood of dying if you catch the virus depends on a lot of other variables as well, including age, underlying chronic lung problems, high blood pressure, immunsuppression, and all sorts of other things.
An additional but important issue with this virus is that people can have the virus, shed the virus ( ie so other people can "catch it") even if said person feels well, healthy, and has no symptoms. For those who acquire the virus and don't die, some people will have permanent complications.
All the evidence that we have at this point suggests with little or no or even late behavioral modification, this virus can result in more more deaths than would typically be expected for the general population. A number of posters have noted that if a patient tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 and dies of a heart attack, the death is attributed to COVID even though that person likely would have died independent of SARS-CoV-19 infection. That is true, but I don't think it would explain fully what we have actually been seeing over the last few months. Many cities and hospitals in Western Europe and the US have been having many more patients with severe respiratory complications and failure right now than would typically be expected. In Northern Italy, many hospitals have been overwhelmed with the number of patients in respiratory failure, such that there have not been enough ventilators or even medical staff available to manage some of the patients. Similar things have been noted in other locations, including the US.
All of this suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is more virulent than other infections we typically see around this time of year or in general.
The major questions is how do we minimize mortality and morbidity due to the virus while also minimizing all the complications and issues related to our interventions to minimize the virus' morbidity and mortality. Theoretically, if everyone were to have no human contact for one month, the virus should die out and we wouldn't have to be concerned about the virus. On the other end of the spectrum, we could not alter our behavior at all. If we were to do that all the available evidence suggests that many people would catch virus in short succession, resulting in overwhelming of the medical system so that a number of people would die just because the medical system is overwhelmed (not enough vents and all.)
So, where do we find the balance between these two extremes? One where no one has any human contact for a month and another where people go about their lives with no change. If we were to all isolate for a month, as noted, presumably the virus would cease to be an issue. However, this would lead to a number of other complications related to economic fallout and psychological problems and all sorts of other issues. If we did nothing and lived our lives as normal, all the evidence that we have suggests that many more people would die, partly related to so many people being infected at once and overwhelming the medical infrastructure. If we were to find a medium between these extremes it would not be ideal either.
Ultimately, there are no good answers. Anyone who claims they have an ideal or perfect solution to this whole COVID-19 mess is either lying or doesn't have a good grasp of the situation. No matter which path is chosen, some group of people are going to be screwed over.
