Once again, from the frontline of COVID-19's war on the elderly, a follow-up diary covering recent thoughts of two of our seniors. They are heroes in their own way.
Disease
"Track and Trace" is the latest COVID-19 catchphrase. It describes the process of identifying the ill and exposed, which then can make it safer for us to mingle socially once again. As a program gets underway in the U.S., what lessons can we learn from Asia?
The death toll from the coronavirus will place COVID-19 in the top 10 causes of death in the United States in 2020, possibly as high as #3. Yet, it likely will remain far behind the deaths caused by heart disease and cancer.
Much remains unknown about the coronavirus. A new paper published in The Lancet estimates that roughly 60% of the population needs to be immune to COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity.
The general belief is that COVID-19’s harms fall disproportionately upon the frail, as well as the classes and groups that often find themselves holding the short end of the stick: the poor and minorities. What makes these groups so susceptible? Let's take a look.
What's worse, flying American Airlines or camping out in a Greyhound's bus bathroom during National Projectile Vomiting Day? Ask Erin Strine. American recently stuffed her, and a whole bunch of other people, into a flying incubator. It wasn't pretty.
New York's Mount Sinai hospital reports that several patients under age 50 have suffered from COVID-19-associated strokes from blood clots. Other anecdotal and small-series reports have shown increased clotting in COVID-19 patients, often ending in death. What's going on here? Let's take a look.
It's pretty clear by now that the statistics on COVID-19 are a hot mess. One news report quoted Betsy McCaughey, New York's former lieutenant governor, characterizing nursing homes as "death pits." Is the underlying problem something we should have known, or already measured? Or is this another healthcare disparity that we have chosen to ignore, which COVID-19 subsequently revealed? Let's take a look.
As an avid reader of the New York Times, it pains me greatly to read about a familiar subject that has so many errors and misconceptions. Especially when COVID-19's impact on society is being discussed.
To understand how severe and lethal COVID-19 really is, we need to know how many have been infected, which, in this equation, is the "denominator." An early study from Stanford of Santa Clara County says we may be underestimating how many cases there already are, which inaccurately gauges COVID-19’s infectivity and eventual mortality.
Why are basic questions about the biology of SARS-CoV-2 so hard to answer?
It's quite likely that the human toll from COVID-19 will not be as bad as the prediction models forecasted. That's because models contain simplifying assumptions that rarely hold true in the real world; our human response is probably the least predictable of all. And yet, while all models are useful, all models are also wrong.