A crying doctor, patients gasping for air and limited coronavirus tests: A look inside a triage tent

[Formerly Once-Ler]

A crying doctor, patients gasping for air and limited coronavirus tests: A look inside a triage tent in Chicago

Michael Dolan describes his experience at Northwestern as “an entirely preventable human disaster” — but he doesn’t blame the hospital or its medical staff.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/4/1/21202205/northwestern-hospital-coronavirus-triage-tent-michael-dolan

Michael Dolan started crying late Friday afternoon as he walked away from Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Dolan wasn’t crying because he had spent a week and a half dealing with severe coronavirus symptoms or because an X-ray confirmed he had an acute upper respiratory lung infection. He wasn’t crying about the fact that he was developing pneumonia or that he had just consoled a crying doctor.

Dolan was crying because, after spending hours at the downtown hospital’s outdoor triage tent listening to gasping patients all around him, he had just witnessed the first signs of what he believes is the health care system collapsing. It was “an entirely preventable human disaster” caused not by the hard-working health care professionals, but by failed policies, he says.

This didn’t happen at a poorly resourced or rural hospital, either. This was one of the nation’s best medical centers.

And despite 15 days of serious symptoms, including a 105-degree fever, Dolan still hasn’t been tested for COVID-19.

Much more disgusting failure at link

'triage tent in Chicago.' WTF?  Where are the GD tests?

[Formerly Once-Ler]

https://twitter.com/skarlamangla/status/1245500475253780480

Soumya @skarlamangla
·
7h
emergency room nurses in LA are telling me that the stay-at-home orders appear to have reduced the numbers of car accidents and gunshot wounds requiring medical care, so some ERs are actually emptier than normal. what a weird time

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-01/coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders-have-reduced-traffic-accidents-by-half - This is behind a paywall I can't see it but the headline is thought provoking.

[Smokin Joe]

This is what happens when bureaucrats make medical decisions.

Fully half of those who have tested positive in this State are in the 20-50 age group.

[Neverdul]

A crying doctor, patients gasping for air and limited coronavirus tests: A look inside a triage tent in Chicago

Michael Dolan describes his experience at Northwestern as “an entirely preventable human disaster” — but he doesn’t blame the hospital or its medical staff.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/4/1/21202205/northwestern-hospital-coronavirus-triage-tent-michael-dolan

Much more disgusting failure at link

'triage tent in Chicago.' WTF?  Where are the GD tests?

"And despite 15 days of serious symptoms, including a 105-degree fever, Dolan still hasn’t been tested for COVID-19."
(Snip)
“Dolan was told he couldn’t get tested, though, because he was young and hadn’t traveled from a hotspot. Instead, the doctor would consider Dolan an unofficial coronavirus patient and check in with him a week later for updates on his condition — just as the physician was already doing with 11 others.”
(Snip)
When Dolan showed up to Northwestern, he had a fever and chills, his heart rate was fluctuating and he had a cough and migraine. A doctor there told him she knew he certainly had COVID-19 and, according to Dolan, said he was “the worst patient your age group that I’ve seen.”
(Snip)
Yet he still was told he couldn’t get a test because he wasn’t 65 years or older.

@Once-Ler

Yes, where are the GD tests! The tests we were told how many weeks ago, that would be available (and free) to anyone who wanted one; the tests you could get at all those drive-throughs in the parking lots of Target, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart; all the places doing testing that you could find via that Google website we were promised that never materialized? Remember that? Pepperidge Farms and the “Member Berries” might not ‘member but I do.

And this is what is disturbing to me. We have some people saying that because of all the mild or asymptomatic cases, the CFR will end up being much lower, lower than influenza when all is said and done and therefore COVID-19 is no big deal. You know, just take a deep breath, no big deal, everything is fine.

But I would suggest that we have no idea how many are mild or asymptomatic if we can’t even test people who are severely ill and showing up at ER’s because they don’t meet some criteria such as being 65 years or older or having a history of travel from a “hot spot”, likely because in truth, we 1) do not have near enough tests and 2) do not have enough capacity and materials to process the tests we do have.

And should this 39-year old die from pneumonia (and I hope and pray he doesn’t) without ever having been tested for COVID-19, would he be tested for it post mortem or would the cause of death be “garden variety” pneumonia and not counted as a COVID-19 death? And would this skew the mortality rate higher to a younger and healthier demographic than what we’ve been led to believe?

IMO, the reason to be concerned about the mild or asymptomatic cases is how the disease can be spread by that cohort and the very reason why social distancing is so important.  But perhaps we need to not count these unknown and estimated mild or asymptomatic cases when calculating a CFR because if they never get any symptoms or the symptoms are mild and don’t last for more than a day or two, those people, while capable of spreading, are not in any danger of dying. Perhaps we need to factor in more heavily those with more severe symptoms when calculating the CFR especially with the testing foul up but we can’t even do that if we aren’t testing.

And we GD should be testing people who come to a doctor’s office or urgent care or ER with all the symptoms regardless of their age.

End of rant.   

[Smokin Joe]

@Once-Ler

Yes, where are the GD tests! The tests we were told how many weeks ago, that would be available (and free) to anyone who wanted one; the tests you could get at all those drive-throughs in the parking lots of Target, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart; all the places doing testing that you could find via that Google website we were promised that never materialized? Remember that? Pepperidge Farms and the “Member Berries” might not ‘member but I do.

And this is what is disturbing to me. We have some people saying that because of all the mild or asymptomatic cases, the CFR will end up being much lower, lower than influenza when all is said and done and therefore COVID-19 is no big deal. You know, just take a deep breath, no big deal, everything is fine.

But I would suggest that we have no idea how many are mild or asymptomatic if we can’t even test people who are severely ill and showing up at ER’s because they don’t meet some criteria such as being 65 years or older or having a history of travel from a “hot spot”, likely because in truth, we 1) do not have near enough tests and 2) do not have enough capacity and materials to process the tests we do have.

And should this 39-year old die from pneumonia (and I hope and pray he doesn’t) without ever having been tested for COVID-19, would he be tested for it post mortem or would the cause of death be “garden variety” pneumonia and not counted as a COVID-19 death? And would this skew the mortality rate higher to a younger and healthier demographic than what we’ve been led to believe?

IMO, the reason to be concerned about the mild or asymptomatic cases is how the disease can be spread by that cohort and the very reason why social distancing is so important.  But perhaps we need to not count these unknown and estimated mild or asymptomatic cases when calculating a CFR because if they never get any symptoms or the symptoms are mild and don’t last for more than a day or two, those people, while capable of spreading, are not in any danger of dying. Perhaps we need to factor in more heavily those with more severe symptoms when calculating the CFR especially with the testing foul up but we can’t even do that if we aren’t testing.

And we GD should be testing people who come to a doctor’s office or urgent care or ER with all the symptoms regardless of their age.

End of rant.   

I am in agreement, anyone presenting with symptoms should be tested, regardless of age.
While I have little doubt that there are mild cases out there who have recovered without testing which would bring mortality rates down had they been tested, for now we have what stats we have. Establishing arbitrary age limits is folly.

Of the 142 who have tested positive for SARS CoV-2 in this state, over half are under 50.