roygbiv - Member - The Prepared

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Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

What do you think the point flattening of the curve is? As a physician you should know. It buys time for the science to catch up to the disease. Meaning, effective antiviral medication, understanding cytokine storm and developing drugs to interrupt it, identification of as yet unknown risk factors for terminal progression, and preventing overtaxing available resources (EMS, EDs and ICUs), and eventually a vaccine. The key to opening up is testing widely and should have been done in the Containment Phase in January and February. Now mitigation is all we have. Instead, executive branch was in Denial Phase and only reluctantly now adjusting. I can tell you my income is cut in half by the economic shutdown and, as an emergency physician, I depend on volume of patients. There is no salary or benefits other than what I manage. I am as eager to see people go back to work as anyone else, but I put my financial interests below my sense of responsibility to public health. The Urgent Care business owners, dressing up like clinicians are inverse to that in my opinion and are spurring the uninformed masses to revolt. This is irresponsible. Opening up the society can and must be accompanied by rapid testing. Only then can we switch to quarantining the sick and the at risk instead of the healthy. Of course the case fatality rates will be lower when the walking wounded are ultimately tested and counted. No one doubts that. But we are still learning who is really at risk and what the risks are, i.e. multiple organ system dysfunction in certain young people. We don’t even know if a patient can get sick again. Again, this should have been tackled 3-4 months ago by the president who abdicated his responsibilities. Now there is an industry of deniers, apologists and enablers. Unforgiveable.

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

Name me an antimicrobial nasal spray? You could make a case for nasal steriod sprays, which are common and do suppress the immune system and are used to treat bacterial sinusitis concurrent with an oral antibiotic like augmentin. Anyway, you have already said you were more educated than most, so thought you should know. You should also know that Erickson is easily disproved in the first 20 minutes of the video by his own numbers. He is dressed up in scrubs but is not practicing medicine and is a businessman trying to get his business back to life. Your “analysis” of the curve going up and down, stating it must mean it’s bogus or that people are coming back to life is particularly troubling in terms of your credibility.

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

Problem is that it is not just people with easily identifiable risk factors such as age, lung disease, heart disease, HTN, DM, immunosuppression, etc. There are healthy young people who eat well and exercise and never get sick who are dying. There is likely an occult genetic switch triggered in some people who will get the worst of cytokine storm, capillary leak syndrome, pulmonary edema, hypoxemia, get intubated and die. I’ve seen it. I’ve intubated several. This is new and it is real.

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

I don’t know what kind of “health care professional” you are but I am an emergency physician and I crunched Erickson’s numbers about Norway and Sweden. It is easy to see with simple division and multiplication that what he suggests is directly and dramatically contradicted by his own numbers. He casually brings up Norway and Sweden as similar populations, Norway lockdown and Sweden no lockdown, and gives a bunch of numbers explicitly stating 1765 deaths in Sweden and only 182 deaths in Norway. He throws in that California has 1227 deaths. As if he’d made his case, he quickly sums up saying “millions of cases, very small death” and moves on to talk about increasing rates of child and spousal abuse caused by home isolation. So Sweden has only twice the population of Norway and 5 times the deaths per population unit! And California has 3.6 times the population of Sweden and only 1227 deaths. Norway and California were cautious, Sweden not so much. So his own numbers say the opposite of what you think he has proved. And his numbers are about a week old and the numbers are even worse now. Wake up.

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Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

What do you think the point flattening of the curve is? As a physician you should know. It buys time for the science to catch up to the disease. Meaning, effective antiviral medication, understanding cytokine storm and developing drugs to interrupt it, identification of as yet unknown risk factors for terminal progression, and preventing overtaxing available resources (EMS, EDs and ICUs), and eventually a vaccine. The key to opening up is testing widely and should have been done in the Containment Phase in January and February. Now mitigation is all we have. Instead, executive branch was in Denial Phase and only reluctantly now adjusting. I can tell you my income is cut in half by the economic shutdown and, as an emergency physician, I depend on volume of patients. There is no salary or benefits other than what I manage. I am as eager to see people go back to work as anyone else, but I put my financial interests below my sense of responsibility to public health. The Urgent Care business owners, dressing up like clinicians are inverse to that in my opinion and are spurring the uninformed masses to revolt. This is irresponsible. Opening up the society can and must be accompanied by rapid testing. Only then can we switch to quarantining the sick and the at risk instead of the healthy. Of course the case fatality rates will be lower when the walking wounded are ultimately tested and counted. No one doubts that. But we are still learning who is really at risk and what the risks are, i.e. multiple organ system dysfunction in certain young people. We don’t even know if a patient can get sick again. Again, this should have been tackled 3-4 months ago by the president who abdicated his responsibilities. Now there is an industry of deniers, apologists and enablers. Unforgiveable.

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

Name me an antimicrobial nasal spray? You could make a case for nasal steriod sprays, which are common and do suppress the immune system and are used to treat bacterial sinusitis concurrent with an oral antibiotic like augmentin. Anyway, you have already said you were more educated than most, so thought you should know. You should also know that Erickson is easily disproved in the first 20 minutes of the video by his own numbers. He is dressed up in scrubs but is not practicing medicine and is a businessman trying to get his business back to life. Your “analysis” of the curve going up and down, stating it must mean it’s bogus or that people are coming back to life is particularly troubling in terms of your credibility.

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

Problem is that it is not just people with easily identifiable risk factors such as age, lung disease, heart disease, HTN, DM, immunosuppression, etc. There are healthy young people who eat well and exercise and never get sick who are dying. There is likely an occult genetic switch triggered in some people who will get the worst of cytokine storm, capillary leak syndrome, pulmonary edema, hypoxemia, get intubated and die. I’ve seen it. I’ve intubated several. This is new and it is real.

Reply to: Dr. Erickson’s viral “COVID-19 Briefing” video is dangerously wrong Posted April 29, 2020

I don’t know what kind of “health care professional” you are but I am an emergency physician and I crunched Erickson’s numbers about Norway and Sweden. It is easy to see with simple division and multiplication that what he suggests is directly and dramatically contradicted by his own numbers. He casually brings up Norway and Sweden as similar populations, Norway lockdown and Sweden no lockdown, and gives a bunch of numbers explicitly stating 1765 deaths in Sweden and only 182 deaths in Norway. He throws in that California has 1227 deaths. As if he’d made his case, he quickly sums up saying “millions of cases, very small death” and moves on to talk about increasing rates of child and spousal abuse caused by home isolation. So Sweden has only twice the population of Norway and 5 times the deaths per population unit! And California has 3.6 times the population of Sweden and only 1227 deaths. Norway and California were cautious, Sweden not so much. So his own numbers say the opposite of what you think he has proved. And his numbers are about a week old and the numbers are even worse now. Wake up.