I thought this was interesting, sorry it is so long. I didn't edit it. It helped me, so I thought some of my friends here might like to read:
"Being a physician, and having some experience with treatment and knowledge of the emerging medical literature on COVID-19, I hope folks don't mind if I share some thoughts that you may not have heard and that may prove useful to you. Please understand that, as you will see, much of this represents my own personal analysis of the problem and is not meant to constitute formal medical advice, or to take the place of that given by your own provider.
1). Please don’t be consumed by excessive fear of contracting the virus. In my mind, in a way, and maybe perversely, we can take comfort in seeing that celebrities like Tom Hanks, members of Congress and others of highly visible political stature are contracting the virus. They give a face to the reality that typically, they just feel like they have a cold or the flu, and then they reliably and uneventfully get better by staying at home, self-isolating, and following common sense health practices.
2). The death rate from contracting the virus in patients under 40 appears to be quite low and comparable to that of influenza (approximately 0.2% or 2 patients in a thousand). It is likely that, even in that group, the risk of death is higher in individuals with autoimmune disease or who are otherwise immune compromised, and even those people are likely to do fine and just get better. So, for the most part, DON’T GO CRAZY THINKING YOU RE GOING TO DIE. And if you are elderly and mostly healthy, don’t be excessively worried about reports you read that the death rates in patients of advanced age are much higher. I strongly suspect that death rate is magnified by the fact that many of those elderly suffer from severe dementia or other medical conditions that make them not candidates for aggressive care in the hospital or in the intensive care unit.
3). Speaking of aggressive care in the intensive care unit, I am an ICU physician, and I can assure you that we know how to treat this virus, and ICU doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists have all the expertise locally we require to do so. The complications caused by this virus that make ICU admission necessary demand no different or novel treatments than other similarly sick patients in the ICU. To be honest, my biggest worry in taking care of these patients is not the risk I take in treating them. We know what to do to minimize our personal risk. I am more concerned that we will run out of the personal protective equipment like masks, eye protection, and other necessary body coverings. Please… PLEASE don’t go out and panic-buy N- 95 masks. We need those masks to do high risk procedures like intubation and bronchoscopy on COVID-19 patients and they are in short supply. The fact of the matter is that the virus is spread by droplets rather than aerosol under all but the most unusual circumstances. What that means is that if you’re insistent on using masks at home or on the go, just buy regular surgical masks – they will be much cheaper, and under almost all conditions you are likely to encounter, will be comparably effective. Don’t wear the masks so long that they get wet from your breathing. They lose their effectiveness as a barrier when that happens.
4). Children appear to be as susceptible as adults are to contracting the virus. But…curiously, young children don’t seem to get as seriously ill as adults do. We don’t understand why, but there are 2 theories currently. One is that young children are constantly exposed to viruses and are frequently sick with respiratory infections. Since most coronaviruses “merely” cause the common cold, there may be some crossover immunity with COVID–19. The second is that children have many less landing sites, called receptors, in their nasal tissues, so it is harder for the virus to get a firm hold and overwhelm their immune systems as opposed to those of adults. I don’t personally know if this is also true of newborns, whose immune systems are very immature – My personal belief is that it is prudent just to keep them at home and not let them get exposed to the outside world.
5). Originally, public health authorities overwhelmingly concentrated on testing patients who had a relevant travel history to places where infection was known to be present. But now, we have passed the time when travel history is important. Without question, the virus is now in the community. Hunkering your entire family down in your home is really the right thing to do to minimize your risk. It may be a difficult sell, but this is really important for your teenager or young millennial in his or her 20s to understand. As the Wall Street Journal has recently shown, this is a group that largely feels they are bulletproof, and they tend to resist adopting social distance measures (South Padre Island, anyone?) If your teenager insists on playing pickup basketball with a group of his or her friends, there’s a lot of sweat and other secretions that are being passed back and forth. Once one of those children is infected, the whole group will be, and your teenager will be bringing that infection home to you.
6). Since the virus is spread by droplets, it’s helpful to maintain a 6-foot distance from your family and friends as much as you can reasonably tolerate. The droplets spread by infected individuals tend to drop off markedly beyond that distance. Technically, this goes for people who are not known to be infected. Keep in mind that it takes an average of 6 days from the time you are infected to when you will show symptoms.
7). If you get sick with a respiratory illness that could ultimately prove to be COVID-19, don’t take ibuprofen to treat your fever. Use Tylenol instead. The former may actually worsen your signs and symptoms.
8). The official name for this virus is now SARS-CoV-2 rather than COVID-19. If you start seeing the former in the press and publications, they are one and the same.
9). This may be overkill, and I readily admit it – it is my personal habit, and I cannot honestly say that we have enough information to formally recommend it. There is some evidence that the virus may stay active for a while on surfaces that are touched by people who are infected. That means that if infected folks cough or sneeze into their hand, then place it on a touch pad in the grocery store or a gas pump handle, they may be transmitting viruses to those who immediately come behind them. I have taken to putting on a simple vinyl glove or my right hand just before I pump gas or hit the touch pad at HEB, then removing and disposing of it immediately afterward, not touching the outside of the glove while doing so. Again, this is just my practice. It is not a proven strategy. At this point, we really have no evidence that you can catch the virus this way, so don’t panic if you don’t do this. 10). Another practice in my family that just seems prudent. In addition to washing our hands frequently, we periodically wipe down the surfaces of places we touch frequently in the house (handles of refrigerators, microwaves, kitchen sink faucets, stove) with bactericidal/virucidal wipes, such as Clorox disinfecting wipes. Again, this is not a proven strategy, but as infected patients tend to be asymptomatic on average for those 6 days I mentioned above before they show symptoms, it may be a way to minimize exposure. Please don’t take this as gospel or necessarily run out in a panic to get the wipes – it’s really MOST important to wash our hands before and after touching common surfaces. I am thinking that if you do a variation of this, might be good to also wipe down your car steering wheel and shifter and door handles once you get home from being out and about (and touching lots of stuff) – and don’t forget to wash your hands first before you do so. Speaking of wipes, be aware that the vast majority of medical disinfectants kill bacteria and viruses as they DRY, so dedicate a bit of time to allow drying before touching those surfaces again if you really want to not be exposed to the germs you are working to kill. "
EDIT: SORRY - I posted this in the wrong place. I thought I was in General Discussion. Can a moderator move it for me?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2020 06:47PM by roflwofl.
"Being a physician, and having some experience with treatment and knowledge of the emerging medical literature on COVID-19, I hope folks don't mind if I share some thoughts that you may not have heard and that may prove useful to you. Please understand that, as you will see, much of this represents my own personal analysis of the problem and is not meant to constitute formal medical advice, or to take the place of that given by your own provider.
1). Please don’t be consumed by excessive fear of contracting the virus. In my mind, in a way, and maybe perversely, we can take comfort in seeing that celebrities like Tom Hanks, members of Congress and others of highly visible political stature are contracting the virus. They give a face to the reality that typically, they just feel like they have a cold or the flu, and then they reliably and uneventfully get better by staying at home, self-isolating, and following common sense health practices.
2). The death rate from contracting the virus in patients under 40 appears to be quite low and comparable to that of influenza (approximately 0.2% or 2 patients in a thousand). It is likely that, even in that group, the risk of death is higher in individuals with autoimmune disease or who are otherwise immune compromised, and even those people are likely to do fine and just get better. So, for the most part, DON’T GO CRAZY THINKING YOU RE GOING TO DIE. And if you are elderly and mostly healthy, don’t be excessively worried about reports you read that the death rates in patients of advanced age are much higher. I strongly suspect that death rate is magnified by the fact that many of those elderly suffer from severe dementia or other medical conditions that make them not candidates for aggressive care in the hospital or in the intensive care unit.
3). Speaking of aggressive care in the intensive care unit, I am an ICU physician, and I can assure you that we know how to treat this virus, and ICU doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists have all the expertise locally we require to do so. The complications caused by this virus that make ICU admission necessary demand no different or novel treatments than other similarly sick patients in the ICU. To be honest, my biggest worry in taking care of these patients is not the risk I take in treating them. We know what to do to minimize our personal risk. I am more concerned that we will run out of the personal protective equipment like masks, eye protection, and other necessary body coverings. Please… PLEASE don’t go out and panic-buy N- 95 masks. We need those masks to do high risk procedures like intubation and bronchoscopy on COVID-19 patients and they are in short supply. The fact of the matter is that the virus is spread by droplets rather than aerosol under all but the most unusual circumstances. What that means is that if you’re insistent on using masks at home or on the go, just buy regular surgical masks – they will be much cheaper, and under almost all conditions you are likely to encounter, will be comparably effective. Don’t wear the masks so long that they get wet from your breathing. They lose their effectiveness as a barrier when that happens.
4). Children appear to be as susceptible as adults are to contracting the virus. But…curiously, young children don’t seem to get as seriously ill as adults do. We don’t understand why, but there are 2 theories currently. One is that young children are constantly exposed to viruses and are frequently sick with respiratory infections. Since most coronaviruses “merely” cause the common cold, there may be some crossover immunity with COVID–19. The second is that children have many less landing sites, called receptors, in their nasal tissues, so it is harder for the virus to get a firm hold and overwhelm their immune systems as opposed to those of adults. I don’t personally know if this is also true of newborns, whose immune systems are very immature – My personal belief is that it is prudent just to keep them at home and not let them get exposed to the outside world.
5). Originally, public health authorities overwhelmingly concentrated on testing patients who had a relevant travel history to places where infection was known to be present. But now, we have passed the time when travel history is important. Without question, the virus is now in the community. Hunkering your entire family down in your home is really the right thing to do to minimize your risk. It may be a difficult sell, but this is really important for your teenager or young millennial in his or her 20s to understand. As the Wall Street Journal has recently shown, this is a group that largely feels they are bulletproof, and they tend to resist adopting social distance measures (South Padre Island, anyone?) If your teenager insists on playing pickup basketball with a group of his or her friends, there’s a lot of sweat and other secretions that are being passed back and forth. Once one of those children is infected, the whole group will be, and your teenager will be bringing that infection home to you.
6). Since the virus is spread by droplets, it’s helpful to maintain a 6-foot distance from your family and friends as much as you can reasonably tolerate. The droplets spread by infected individuals tend to drop off markedly beyond that distance. Technically, this goes for people who are not known to be infected. Keep in mind that it takes an average of 6 days from the time you are infected to when you will show symptoms.
7). If you get sick with a respiratory illness that could ultimately prove to be COVID-19, don’t take ibuprofen to treat your fever. Use Tylenol instead. The former may actually worsen your signs and symptoms.
8). The official name for this virus is now SARS-CoV-2 rather than COVID-19. If you start seeing the former in the press and publications, they are one and the same.
9). This may be overkill, and I readily admit it – it is my personal habit, and I cannot honestly say that we have enough information to formally recommend it. There is some evidence that the virus may stay active for a while on surfaces that are touched by people who are infected. That means that if infected folks cough or sneeze into their hand, then place it on a touch pad in the grocery store or a gas pump handle, they may be transmitting viruses to those who immediately come behind them. I have taken to putting on a simple vinyl glove or my right hand just before I pump gas or hit the touch pad at HEB, then removing and disposing of it immediately afterward, not touching the outside of the glove while doing so. Again, this is just my practice. It is not a proven strategy. At this point, we really have no evidence that you can catch the virus this way, so don’t panic if you don’t do this. 10). Another practice in my family that just seems prudent. In addition to washing our hands frequently, we periodically wipe down the surfaces of places we touch frequently in the house (handles of refrigerators, microwaves, kitchen sink faucets, stove) with bactericidal/virucidal wipes, such as Clorox disinfecting wipes. Again, this is not a proven strategy, but as infected patients tend to be asymptomatic on average for those 6 days I mentioned above before they show symptoms, it may be a way to minimize exposure. Please don’t take this as gospel or necessarily run out in a panic to get the wipes – it’s really MOST important to wash our hands before and after touching common surfaces. I am thinking that if you do a variation of this, might be good to also wipe down your car steering wheel and shifter and door handles once you get home from being out and about (and touching lots of stuff) – and don’t forget to wash your hands first before you do so. Speaking of wipes, be aware that the vast majority of medical disinfectants kill bacteria and viruses as they DRY, so dedicate a bit of time to allow drying before touching those surfaces again if you really want to not be exposed to the germs you are working to kill. "
EDIT: SORRY - I posted this in the wrong place. I thought I was in General Discussion. Can a moderator move it for me?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2020 06:47PM by roflwofl.
