Tuesday, March 03, 2020

Coming To A Hospital Near You

... all the staff in full-body protective suits.


While the Coronavirus itself might not be all that bad, the stress an epidemic would place on our healthcare workers would be. I didn't think about it until Wretchard The Cat tweeted it, but exposure to the Coronavirus could take out whole groups of emergency room personnel. If they become carriers, they can't work on patients who might not yet have the disease.


OTOH


  1. If Coronavirus isn't such a big deal, why take any more precautions against it than you would against the flu or pneumonia?
  2. It seems to really whack the elderly. What will happen in countries like Japan were so much of the population is elderly?
  3. Will this take care of a large part of LA's and SF's homeless problem? What's it going to be like picking up a couple hundred dead bodies off the street every day for a month? Pretty horrible, I'd say.

6 comments:

Ohioan@Heart said...

I’ve been thinking.

We can only institutionalize the homeless if they can be shown to be a “danger to themselves or others”. If the Corona Virus really gets started, then a population of homeless people would be a rampant breeding ground for its spread, thereby making them a danger to themselves and others.

Hence, at the first sign of Corona Virus near a homeless population, the local authorities should be able to immediately force them into a facility.

Did I go astray somewhere in my reasoning? If not, then this is an opportunity to get the homeless off the streets and into a controlled environment where they can detox from whatever drug they are addicted to or treatment for whatever mental issues they have.

Foxfier said...

Elderly, and pre-existing conditions.

Which suggests that the elderly it hits hardest are the ones who are already likely to be hit by the flu.

... which folks should be taking real measures against, anyways, not just yelling about getting a might-be-50%-effective vaccine.

Stuff like Japan has done, where they shut down schools before the kids spread diseases all over.

K T Cat said...

Ohioan, the only place you're wrong is the last one - there are no places to house them. LA has 60,000 homeless. Just where are you going to put them, the Staples Center? Also, they're almost all drug addicts. Imagine trying to manage 60,000 drug addicts in a single place.

My guess is that SF, LA and Seattle will look like scenes from The Omega Man where the bodies start stacking up on the street.

Dig this video. That's Seattle's homeless problem. It's overwhelmingly due to drugs. The addicts I've known weren't / aren't mentally capable. That means it's not just a housing problem, it's a care problem. Where are you going to find sufficient social workers to deal with them?

K T Cat said...

Foxie, I'm not sure there is a solution to stop it. The thing lives for 9 days on surfaces. That's a crazy long time for a virus.

Foxfier said...

Amen on insanely long. The incubation, and the no symptoms but contagious, also nasty.

Stop it, no; avoid it, yes.

The various memes about "wash your hands" are annoying, but real.

The whole "not going out when you're sick, or your family is sick," another important angle.

Not going places where there are likely infection vectors-- the ER, places where a lot of folks who travel over-seas or have family that goes overseas are, places with a lot of people period...

K T Cat said...

Yeah, I'm thinking I'll need to avoid the gym. I'm pretty unhappy about that.