OP, the infection rate is also moving in the wrong direct. One can look to numerous other geographic areas and learn that once an area gets far behind the curve it takes an uncomfortable length of time to catch back up. I believe the goal (as most cases are traced back to bars and such) is to limit that avenue of spread and hopefully not get to the point where a full lock-down is needed. I work with someone who also works at a bar and she talks about how hard it is to get people to maintain basic precautions such as mask, distance, and hand washing. Unfortunately how people choose to behave has effects the rest of us have to deal with.
Some of this has to due with resource availability, not just number of cases. We ran out of the regent to run COVID tests at my facility last weekend. Contact tracing resources are spread thin. Hospital staffing is low because of staff members in quarantine due to COVID exposure and hospitals are also full from other causes. We are holding ICU patients in our ED for hours before they can be moved upstairs, even longer for med surge patients. This leaves the ED full and at times we are literally moving patients who have been stabilized out of rooms and into hallways to open up rooms for unstable patient who could die in minuets without treatment. This kind of stuff happens occasionally anyway, but COVID has added a strain to an already stretched system. When this happens it is not just COVID patients who pay, but every person who gets sick or injured. In places that have been hit hard, I can guaranty there were patients who died because of the SARS-COV-2 virus even though they never had COVID 19 simply because there where not resources available that normally would have been.
To some of the other posters:
How COVID 19 deaths are being handled is no different than flue, pneumonia, pyelonephritis, Etc. deaths when it comes to the death certificates.
If someone who is on deaths door falls in the hospital and sustains an injury that a normal person would survive, but they don't because their system cannot compensate, that injury would be listed as a cause of death (and the hospital has to notify the Joint Commission of a Sentinel Event).
There is a point to the idea that we should not consume the future of the young to preserve the lives of the old. However, when anyone has to support their position by denying facts and weaving conspiracy theories it undermines whatever validity may be contained in what they are saying.
To believe what some of you are claiming, one would have to believe that multiple other countries are also inflating their COVID 19 numbers even as it hurts their governments and citizens.
Many people who die from COVID 19 have complicating conditions, but they would have survived for many more years if they did not get infected. Or, are you arguing that HTN, DM, CHF and age over 60 are imminently terminal conditions?
Thankfully the percentage of people who die from COVID 19 is and will continue to decline as we (the medical community) figure out how to treat it. As an example, there is evidence from other corona viruses and viral illnesses (SARS, MERS, influenza) that dexamethasone does not help and possibly makes things worse. As such, dexamethazone was avoided in the treatment of COVID 19. Thanks to a study in the UK, we now know that it improves survival in COVID 19 patients. Thus, treatment recommendations have been changed. There are other drugs that we tried early on and now know are absolutely worthless, and in some causes worse than worthless as they increased mortality. The same goes for other interventions, such as early intubation. I'm sure we will continue to learn so long as we approach what we believe we know with humility and recognize that topics that where once insignificant for us may now be important. Such as steroid-related strongyloides hyperinfection, something I had not heard of until recently. Or Kawasaki Syndrom in children, something that before COVID was incredibly rare, but is now occurring at dramatically increased rates.
But hey, don't let me interfere with anyone's Dunning-Kruger effect derived expertise.
Hopefully a mod will lock this thread. Other posters pushed this thread off topic quickly, and I have let myself join in. I would say I'm a fool; "He who passes by and meddles in a quarrel not his own Is like one who takes a dog by the ears." Proverbs 26:17. However, we are all in this together, so this one belongs to all of us whether we like it or not.
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