Re:Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the hea...
by makomk on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @07:16PM
(#23097569)
There's one obvious possibility... there's some evidence that flu triggers heart attacks in people already at risk for one, Covid-19 also seems to do the same, lockdowns have cut short the flu season but are less effective against Covid-19, and I've seen suggestions elsewhere that doctors are refusing to even consider doing this kind of procedure on people who test positive for Covid-19. It's possible the heart attack patients are right there in the hospitals dying untreated.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the hea...
by abalone on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @07:46PM
(#23097884)
Except stroke admissions are way down too. No obvious link between the flu and strokes.
Re:Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the hea...
by makomk on Thursday May 07, 2020 @02:39AM
(#23100346)
Stroke patients are definitely just leaving it far too late to seek treatment. It's been happening in multiple countries. There was even an unfortunate New York Times article where a doctor talked about seeing strokes of a severity they wouldn't expect in people so young, which was spun as proof the coronavirus was causing the strokes - and it just happened to mention in passing that those patients had ignored their symptoms and taken far longer than usual to seek treatment. Of course, if coronavirus was causing strokes we'd expect an increase in stroke patients rather than a decrease.