The average person in the US rightly did not have much reason to be concerned a few weeks ago, but that's not the case anymore. It's important to understand that the situation has evolved rapidly for the worse here, and our response ("panic level" if you will) must escalate accordingly.
In particular:
- Each one of us is now at much higher risk of infection, possibly orders of magnitude higher than the official numbers suggest. The bungled testing rollout, the high level of community spread and the number of deaths together suggest the official numbers are grossly under-counting. [1] This is very different from a few weeks ago when the cases where mostly imported or had known transmission routes.
- A few weeks ago, the CDC was still hoping to contain the epidemic by tracing and quarantining cases. But that has changed. Whereas China, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc have succeeded in containing the disease so far, the US has already failed and the CDC now expects it to eventually spread to most of the US population. [2] Its strategy is now to slow it down enough to avoid what's happening in Italy.
- The situation in Italy has shown us the magnitude of human suffering that will result from people "under-panicking" and going about their daily lives at a similar stage of the epidemic. There will be a rapid explosion in cases, leading to a meltdown of the health care system. Many of us will lose our loved ones, and many of us will die unnecessary deaths from hospitals being overrun. Not to mention the impact on the economy, which we can't measure yet in Italy but could well be greater than the cost of locking down early.
So stop thinking "it's fine". It was a few weeks ago. It's not anymore.
[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summ... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cfYC4YLsu4
I have a difficult time grasping this part. It’s not like it’s something completely new. We encounter virus infections every year during flu season. The SARS outbreak was 18 years ago and MERS was 8 years ago. Did we not learn anything from it?
Sure, it was not as severe as SARS-CoV-2, but we should know how to handle it. I agree we should take precautions to stop spreading. But from seeing what is going on around here in EU, I am thinking that the panic is over-inflated and is doing more harm than good. Maybe it takes panic and fear to scare the majority of people into taking all precautions to stop the virus from spreading?
> Sure, it was not as severe as SARS-CoV-2, but we should know how to handle it.
The answer appears to be no, we didn't. Remember neither of those really hit here in the US.
CDC SARS FAQ [0]
> How many people contracted SARS in the United States during the 2003 outbreak? How many people died of SARS in the United States?
> In the United States, only eight persons were laboratory-confirmed as SARS cases. There were no SARS-related deaths in the United States. All of the eight persons with laboratory-confirmed SARS had traveled to areas where SARS-CoV transmission was occurring.
CDC MERS FAQ [1]
> Q: Has anyone in the United States gotten infected?
> A: Yes, two patients in the U.S. tested positive for MERS-CoV infection, both in May 2014.
The hospitals (nurses at them) that I've heard from say they don't have the masks on hand and they have received no training for how to deal with something like this on this scale. In fact they are being told things contrary to their training like having them wipe down the disposable shield of a CAPR [2] with bleach to re-use it (they are supposed to be single use).
They have limited (10 in the case of the CAPR shields in one hospital) because it's only required for specific diseases that they see few to no cases of per year. They don't have stockpiles of n95 masks because they could alway just order more if they needed them (same with CAPR). They are having to use the CAPR's temporarily because you need to pass a n95 mask fit test [3] (to insure nothing can get in) but the nurses haven't done that. At one hospital they just so happened (dumb luck) to have someone working that day that knew how to administer it and so they have been rushing to have nurses complete it.
> But from seeing what is going on around here in EU
What do you mean by this?
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/faq.html
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/faq.html
[2] http://www.lbs-biotech.com/products/personal-protection/max-...
[3] https://www.osha.gov/video/respiratory_protection/fittesting...
You may think "it's not here yet". It is.
You may think "the numbers are low". They aren't. We are failing miserably in our testing, our numbers are easily off by a factor of 10 (for infections).
You might not want to be "weird" and not want to practice social distancing. You need to.
You need to act when it feels too early and honestly, in the US, that was a week+ ago so at least act now.
I don't say these things to whip people up in a panic, I say them because we are about to get hit hard here in the US. If you know a nurse maybe send them a text and ask how they feel. I can tell you the nurses I know are freaking out because they know we are not prepared. A have a friend who works at a big hospital. They have 2 cases (at least as of a day ago) and they almost buckled under it. They don't have many masks, they don't have training, and the hospital itself has no plans in place. When asked "How many masks do we have?" the answer (on Thursday of this week) was "I don't know" from the head of infections diseases. Let that sink in. March 12th.
I can understand not knowing the count off the top of your head in November 2019, I can understand it in December 2019, I can still wrap my head around not knowing it in January 2020 but damn it... It's March, you are in a meeting to discuss COVID-19 and you don't know how many masks you have on hand?
The world has been warning us for months now and they had no plans for how to handle visitors. The nurses have not done n95 mask fit tests. They are not getting clear direction on how handle mask reuse. We are not prepared for this. If this hospital (which I would trust for any major procedure) is feeling the strain with 2 patients what happens when there are 4? 8? 16? 32?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaE...