I spent the afternoon with my wife (a pathology professor diagnosing over 100 cases a day), my daughter (a 4th year medical student doing clinical rounds), my daughter-in-law (general practitioner in practice with her mother), and my son and 1 year-old grandson. It may be the last time we enjoy a meal together for some time. Already, my daughter-in-law and her mother are not seeing each other at work or after work to protect my grandson. The three of them have aged visibly in the last four weeks and the virus has not really reached pandemic proportions here yet. It is everything. The shortage of masks and hand sanitizers. The need to see patients in surgical scrubs. My daughter-in-law and her mother have removed the upholstered chairs in their waiting room and replaced these with just 5 plastic chairs. Only 5 people at a time are allowed in the waiting room. There is a sense that even if only 1% of patients die, this could be overwhelming for many countries. The south of the Netherlands is now like Italy. Italy has 10 people in 4 room wards. Doctors around the world are being overwhelmed as a bunch of arseholes go out and party and refuse to respect social distance recommendations.
Likely, you will get COVID-19. Likely, you will experience a mild flu. But if you are in the high risk group and you get this, then the chances may be 1 in 10 that you will die. If you don't, you may find your lungs scarred for the rest of your life. So, don't be an arsehole. Don't expect medical professionals to be able to save your life when you are too bloody stupid to take care of yourself. Not even my wife believed me when I said I thought I had something from China.
I was there as one of the first people in the world to get H1N1 (Swine Flu) from Chinese seaman staying in the same hotel. I watched them cough and thought nothing of it. Then, two weeks later and fighting to breathe, I knew that I was in deep when my lungs looked like they had been painted solid white on the admitting X-Ray, which I could not stand up on my own to take. That night, I watched the other three patients in our 4-bed isolation ward die, one after the other and I resigned myself that I did not any longer have the strength to breathe pure oxygen. I knew that I was too tired to go on and would suffocate in my sleep.
Luckily for me, my wife called her Harvard colleagues and they suggested a certain drug on a drip was showing promise in trials and then Tamiflu was found to aid. I slept most to the next three days. People came into that room and left, some to other isolation ward and some to the mortuary. My wife, a hard arse of note (ask RugbyBuck) who went through medical school as a single mother with a baby strapped to her back, cried over my bed several times, asking me to forgive her for not believing me (my GP said I did not have it and no tests were available).
So, desperation? Take this thing as fucking seriously as anything you have seen in your life. This is the one you will tell your grandchildren about, as my grandparents told stories of the Great Depression. Even if it does not kill more than 1%-2%, it's effect on the economy is going to be around a long time.
Wash your hands frequently
Do not touch your face
Stay at home and go out only for truly necessary things (NOT entertainment)
Keep a social distance from everyone, including your loved ones
Take this bloody thing seriously
