I'm sure many of you are aware, especially if you are in the US. News of surging Covid cases across the country look grim as we enter the holiday season. Several days ago, I received texts from a friend about things happening on the hospital floor. His wife is a respiratory therapist.
I haven't kept up on stats for a couple of months now because my workload had returned to normal volume. Thus, my department has been busy getting work done where time and staff permit. We are still understaffed, but we are managing.
Today, I received an emergency broadcast from the State of Utah on my phone.
Smaller social gatherings might be somewhat difficult for people with large families. And this is Utah we are talking about. Lots of people have huge families. I guess people would have to utilize the technology we have this holiday. This doesn't affect my Thanksgiving plans. Unfortunately, New Year's might be a bit different.
I figured it would be a good time to check on the Covid stats for Utah on the government website.
In short, it looks like the percentages I've seen in regards to the pandemic haven't changed. I remember the 5% hospitalization from all positives and the 1% ICU admittance rate. What changed this time is the raw number of active positive cases across the state.
It seems scary that we have used up almost 3/4 of all the ICU beds in the region. However, I have no idea what the normal percent of occupation was before the pandemic. You'd think hospitals would like to keep occupancy high to keep the revenue rolling.
My medical director only hopes our healthcare system doesn't get overwhelmed. He leans more towards more drastic measures in curbing the spread. But, at this point, it is too late for that. I must admit, it's weird seeing him looking like he's defeated.
On the flip side, my immunology professor thinks the economic impact is far greater. Bad policies have caused sufferings that the media don't talk about. The suicides, the job losses, the divorces and separations, etc. It's not that the virus isn't real. It's that the policy makers compounded the problems. To him, the thing that matters now is to mitigate the damage, and not only on the healthcare front.
I often wonder how we will look back in history 10 years from now. To look at the pandemic and the way various governments have responded to it. If nothing else, I hope we can learn about the various effects it had on people. I'm not only talking about the infectious disease side of Covid. The social, political, etc. aspects of the pandemic should be interesting to dissect. It is also my hope that should we encounter a similar future event, we could look back and consider all the factors. Factors that affect not only the spread, but different parts of our civilizations.
Let's hope it doesn't destroy our country first.
Posted with STEMGeeks
