Tracking the next pandemic: Avian Flu Talk |
Our Next Crisis |
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Tabitha111
Adviser Group Joined: January 11 2020 Location: Virginia Status: Offline Points: 11640 |
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Posted: June 07 2020 at 1:38pm |
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opinion/covid-19-survivors-effects.html Our Next Crisis Will Be Caring for Survivors of Covid-19 Many among the most ill may emerge with debilitating infirmities that will present major challenges in care .By Robert Klitzman Dr. Klitzman is professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. June 4, 2020 Over the next weeks and months, these patients will tell us what “survival” from Covid-19 really means. We have plenty of data on rates of death versus survival from the virus, but not much on the quality of survival. But what we do know from the limited data about survivors of Covid-19, and about how ventilated and critically ill patients fare after spending weeks in intensive-care units, raises significant concerns. These patients often end up on ventilators, in which a tube is inserted into the mouth and down into the airway. Imagine a tongue depressor thrust down your mouth 24/7 for a week. And many of these patients will develop Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, in which fluid builds up in the tiny air sacs of In a recent article on the blog of the journal Health Affairs, three public health experts at Harvard estimated that assuming 40 percent of the country is infected over the course of the pandemic, more than 20 million Americans will be hospitalized and nearly 4.5 million will require intensive care. How many will suffer from these chronic, disabling conditions that fall into what I call post-Covid-19 syndrome, requiring continued care and rehab in health care facilities or at home, is unknown. How will we deal with them? Usually, hospitals try to discharge them to longer-term rehabilitation centers, long-term acute-care hospitals or nursing homes, but these institutions have limited capacity and often don’t want to accept Covid-19 patients, who may still be infectious. That’s why, increasingly, some of these patients remain in hospitals, using resources that could be used for other Covid-19 patients or those who have cancer, diabetes or other serious diseases but have had to postpone treatment because of the pandemic. Others who are being sent home may have significant physical or cognitive impairments, preventing them from working or caring for themselves. The needs of Covid-19 survivors have received little attention and must be addressed. Many politicians and others delayed responding to the pandemic, hoping that it was a myth or that if we simply ignored it, it would go away. We should not make that mistake again. Robert Klitzman is a psychiatrist and the director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University. He is the author, most recently, of “Designing Babies: How Technology Is Changing the Ways We Create Children.” |
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'A man who does not think and plan long ahead will find trouble right at his door.'
--Confucius |
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carbon20
Moderator Joined: April 08 2006 Location: West Australia Status: Offline Points: 65816 |
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yes not over by a long way yet...... the ramifications are vast...... |
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Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.🖖
Marcus Aurelius |
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