Hello everyone it has been a long
while. It is without a doubt fact that I have been lulled into
complacency. See when you find a good job and great protocols you
start to forget. Then Facebook and the media point out how Medicine
is poorly represented in public. So let me unload on the pandemic
myths that are there.
1. FDNY is mad they are no longer
allowed to transport patients in cardiac arrest.
Dear NBC News, given that you
obviously have no fact checkers on your staff, I guess you can be
forgiven. But if you really want to get to a scandal, allow me to
make it clear to you. If FDNY are regularly transporting cardiac
arrests they are literally going against every bit of research and
the basic standard of care that is suggested by ever advisory agency
out there, including the American Heart Association.
Let me spell this out, because while I
am not a professional journalist, I am a professional paramedic. If
you are transporting people in cardiac arrest you are wrong. You are
literally decreasing their odds of survival. CPR in a moving vehicle
is ineffective. They should be following the national standard of
care.
- US not having enough ICU beds
According the the Society of Critical
Care Medicine, the United States had more ICU beds per capita than
any country in the world. The only country that comes close is
Germany. This part of why the US is doing so well
- The US is doing poorly in its response.
Right now, according to the projected
course, only one country is actually beating it. That is the United
States. We are not perfect, by no means. And there is a likelihood
due to bad faith of a company that decided to cancel a government
contract that was awarded in 2014. The contract was reawarded in 2018
and the spin up was supposed to be complete next month to start
production.
Both Presidents Trump and Obama did
what they could. The sad thing is that this will cost lives. And lets
be honest, there is a lot of blame to go around. But right now, a lot
of the complaining is not fact based. Its based on placing blame. We
need to work together. If you are going to get the Corona Virus, you
should damned well want to be in the US outside of NYC.
Folks, people are going to die. Most
people placed on vents die, not most COVID patients, most patients.
We need to flatten the curve to make better use of our resources. We
have a lot, and should have more. But in the end we need to look at
each other as brothers and sisters. I hope this gets sent around. I
hope some member of the news media gets it, and realizes that they
are causing harm, We need to know the truth. Citations for several
things are included below.
Correction, the contract was awarded in 2012, I remembered this wrong while typing it up.
https://www.jems.com/2007/07/23/why-are-you-transporting-dead/
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/01/low_us_covid-19_death_rate_means_efforts_are_working.html
https://sccm.org/Blog/March-2020/United-States-Resource-Availability-for-COVID-19
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html
