Proper, full PPE? Low. Proper PPE requires diligence and training, but for medical professionals it’s pretty reasonable to expect them to wear it correctly.
The issue is that “proper PPE” is a bad assumption in America. Normally PPE is one time use stuff; you’re supposed to destroy the N95 after use. But we don’t have nearly enough of the stuff, so doctors have been reusing them for a while. This increases the risk of it failing, which is a huge issue if you’re going to interact with known COVID positive patients.
It takes time and effort to create new ventilators, masks, ppe's, etc... but it takes like 20-30 years to create a new doctor or nurse, they're in limited supply - the more we lose the harder this virus will be to defeat long-term.
Likewise the hit to public schools if we lose janitorial, bussing, teaching, and food-working staff MANY of which skew older.
If a school system in a rural town doesn't have enough workers to bus kids, clean up the school, serve lunch, or teach (there's already a teaching shortage because it's a shit job that doesn't pay what it's worth), then schools will be defunkt before long anyways.
What do we do then? It'll be decades before we can replace all those teachers, so we'll have to speedily move to online teaching... what then do we do about parents who need school as daycare so they can provide?
We're beginning to see how intertwined everything in society is, and it's all seemingly crashing down and most people don't even see it happening... it's just a a flu... it'll be over soon.... someone said on FB yesterday that it'll go away as soon as the election is over the only reason it's so big is because of the election....
No. December the election will be behind us, flu season will be upon us, and the 3rd wave will decimate us worse than this one is. Because it'll be cold, we'll be inside, Christmas will come and families will get tired of quarantine again and it's the perfect storm for another explosion of cases.
ashtonkem|5 years ago
The issue is that “proper PPE” is a bad assumption in America. Normally PPE is one time use stuff; you’re supposed to destroy the N95 after use. But we don’t have nearly enough of the stuff, so doctors have been reusing them for a while. This increases the risk of it failing, which is a huge issue if you’re going to interact with known COVID positive patients.
gremlinsinc|5 years ago
It takes time and effort to create new ventilators, masks, ppe's, etc... but it takes like 20-30 years to create a new doctor or nurse, they're in limited supply - the more we lose the harder this virus will be to defeat long-term.
Likewise the hit to public schools if we lose janitorial, bussing, teaching, and food-working staff MANY of which skew older.
If a school system in a rural town doesn't have enough workers to bus kids, clean up the school, serve lunch, or teach (there's already a teaching shortage because it's a shit job that doesn't pay what it's worth), then schools will be defunkt before long anyways.
What do we do then? It'll be decades before we can replace all those teachers, so we'll have to speedily move to online teaching... what then do we do about parents who need school as daycare so they can provide?
We're beginning to see how intertwined everything in society is, and it's all seemingly crashing down and most people don't even see it happening... it's just a a flu... it'll be over soon.... someone said on FB yesterday that it'll go away as soon as the election is over the only reason it's so big is because of the election....
No. December the election will be behind us, flu season will be upon us, and the 3rd wave will decimate us worse than this one is. Because it'll be cold, we'll be inside, Christmas will come and families will get tired of quarantine again and it's the perfect storm for another explosion of cases.
rpiguy|5 years ago
There are 5.1 million people working in hospitals.
https://datausa.io/profile/naics/hospitals
800/5100000 = .00016
They are therefore three times less likely to die from Covid than the general population.
Schools across Europe have opened. Children rarely spread the disease. Doctors recommend schools open.
Twenty times as many children died of the flu last year than from COVID.
Death rates are not surging in proportion to cases.
The CFR of this disease does not meet the threshold for a pandemic, nor does it merit the level of fear engendered by the press.
It is utterly ridiculous.