Not going to sugar coat it. We’re in for a rough few weeks in Illinois. Like the rest of America, only Land of Lincoln will get it worse than most states. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people in key places in recent days and it’s been sobering.
Here’s the distillation of what to expect for Illinois.
The IDPH “experts” expect the Chicagoland area to crest in cases around April 19th. (Here’s a national public site confirming.) Yeah, April 19th – America’s birthday. I didn’t get Illinois’ projected deaths per day (national public site (very optimistic in my opinion): About 110/day in Illinois). Nationally it will probably exceed 50k as a cumulative total. The really worst case I’m told: about 200k deaths per day. UPDATED: This is cumulative deaths, not daily. I screwed up reading the graph.
However, as one doc/engineer (yes, interesting combination of careers… but he’s pretty smart) told me from his earlier engineering career: “Assumption is the root of all f***-ups.” And there are admittedly a lot of assumptions made in all of those projections, both state and national.
Yeah, I should have asked for Illinois projections, but didn’t. Sorry.
I have good news and bad news for everyone.
Good news first.
The good news is that the hydroxycloroquine anti-malarial drug is proving itself very effective in treating CV-19. If you get 5 days of hydroxycloroquine in you once you start feeling the early Wuhan symptoms, you have about a 99.99% chance of avoiding a respirator and death.
Actually, if you’re on a respirator, you’ve got one foot in the grave already. Sorry.
The other really good news is that the Israelis are about 10 days from a vaccine. And the good old Americans have one or two in the works as well. ‘Merica! One’s already in trials. All of this is public sourced.
The Wubonic Plague kills through respiratory arrest or an opportunistic pneumonia infection. The little alveoli in your lungs that exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen get surrounded with liquid (or filled with liquid) due to inflammation/infection. You struggle to breathe but get little oxygen for your effort. And then you crash and die.
This is why you want to get to a hospital long before you’re gasping like a fish out of water for air. And if you have a pulse oximeter at home (they used to be available for less than $20 via Amazon but are probably all gone by now), you can monitor your blood oxygen levels.
If you’re healthy and staying at home with CV19, you’ll want to get back to the hospital ASAP if your blood oxygen level falls sharply, as patients can crater in a matter of hours. If you’ve got issues like COPD, you’re probably not going to be at home with this bug.
The bad news for Illinois.
Cook County will crest around April 19th. It’s gonna be bad. The secondary wave of infection will impact smaller counties about a week or so later. And another follow-up wave for the rest of the state days after that.
The follow-on problem here is that America’s supply of hydroxycloroquine and cloroquine is already strained. Like 3000% of the normal number of scripts written in a given month for chloroquine (normal being 149 units for those keeping track). Shortages are expected before the April 19th Illinois crest. And the Chinese supply us with most if not all of this drug or the primary ingredients.
Don’t take my word for it:
Propofol is “Milk of Amnesia” – the same stuff Michael Jackson used to “sleep” until he had a little overdose. Its uses include the starting and maintenance of general anesthesia, sedation for mechanically ventilated adults, and procedural sedation.
Midazolam is Versed which is also used as anesthesia and for procedural sedation, trouble sleeping, and severe agitation.
What’s more, Cook County is getting the lion’s share of meds and equipment (vents/personal protective equipment to protect health care workers). Smaller counties will not have a pool of reserves to draw upon when their cases crest in the week or so after Cook County uses those stocks.
What even more bad news? Hospitals are not allowing ANY visitors. Your mom/dad/kid/spouse dying? Sorry. No visitors.
And there are no funeral services now with the de facto ban on public gatherings. And frankly, in a week or two, you really are going to want to stay home.
Like “Stay the [bleep] home.”
Want to know what bad sounds / looks like? From a doctor in Louisiana:
I’m a physician at two hospitals here and we are overwhelmed. Both places have ICUs at capacity with COVID-19 patients and every single one of them are on the ventilator. More have died than are being reported because they can’t include those numbers until the tests come back. We are overflowing ventilated patients into the PACU and back down in the ED because we have no more space. We’ve ran out of ventilators and had to begged the fire department to borrow the seven portable ventilators they have on their rigs. We are using pediatric ventilators on adults. We were just donated old ventilators that no shit has a front panel exactly like the time destination panel in the Delorean in the Back to the Future movies.
We had to start shipping patients out to rural hospitals because we can’t absorb that many more patients. I’ve worked for the past 21 days straight and have a week off before working another 35 straight between the two hospitals. Our normal travel doctors are not coming anymore because they’re either avoiding the workload/disease or have more lucrative offers elsewhere. We’re buying our own respirators at price-gouging premiums because I refuse to re-use N95s for a whole damn week anymore. The CDC relaxed it’s guidelines because of mask shortages, not because it’s actually safe. They said a frickin handkerchief is ok for last resort?!?!
We have cardiologists, anesthesiologists, clinic doctors, and surgeons all pitching in due to the shortage. Their elective cases have been cancelled anyway so they have nothing else to do. Have a heart attack? Good luck getting a stent at this point. We’ll just drip clotbuster meds and hope it works.
The ability of this virus to kill people quickly is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Patients young and old, with and without comorbidities, pregnant or not, are not immune.
Take it for what it’s worth. Believe me or not—I can’t really muster up the care at this point.
Thanks JB Pritzker.
Yes, a common theme is that Pritzker thinks the world revolves around Chicago and the little people outside of Cook and the collar counties are about as important to him as the guy serving him his Double Quarter Pounder with Super Size fries.
Anyone can see him at the daily press conferences complaining that he’s not getting everything he wants from the feds.
Orange Man bad and all that.
But it’s not the feds’ job to take care of everyone’s needs. That falls upon the states to safeguard their residents.
As a broke state, Illinois didn’t. Because of “priorities.” Stockpiling emergency medical equipment and supplies was right up there with providing good service to Illinois gun owners trying to comply with the state’s Draconian gun control schemes.
It could be worse. Some states and cities (cough, New York City, cough) public health officials spent their days practicing social justice instead of medicine. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why New York City has a massive “Houston, we have a problem” moment.
People die when real disease outbreaks pops up under the watch of political hacks like NY City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot…
From FrontPage:
Last year, New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot was warning that “even brief contact with the police or indirect exposure is associated with lasting harm to people’s physical and mental health”.
Yeah, no kidding. But wait, there’s more!
“We as a public health department have really been trying to frame criminal justice system involvement as an exposure,” Barbot’s epidemiologist, Kimberly Zweig, claimed.
Oh, but that’s not all!
As the coronavirus bore down on New York City, Barbot and the Health Department were busy operationalizing social justice while remaining oblivious to the scientific realities of the pandemic. The department’s focus on health equity required it to discourage recent arrivals from Wuhan from going into self-quarantine or avoiding large public gatherings like the Lunar New Year celebrations.
“We are very clear: We wish New Yorkers a Happy Lunar New Year and we encourage people to spend time with their families and go about their celebration,” Barbot insisted.
A week later, Barbot appeared at a press event promoting Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown.
“As we gear up to celebrate the #LunarNewYear in NYC, I want to assure New Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans, avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus,” she insisted.
Emphasis added.
That’s Mayor De Blasio’s appointee.
Enough with the bad news.
More good news….
Look for vaccine availability coming online in May. Yeah, it’s going to take time to manufacturer it in quantities to immunize America, but the Trump Administration is moving heaven and earth to make it happen – yesterday. After all, lives are in the balance. And Donald Trump cares about America and Americans first and foremost.
Ditto for making N95 masks and other personal protective equipment for not only health care workers, but for everyday citizens too. A lot of folks don’t realize that 3M had their Chinese-located N95 factory nationalized by the Chinese early in the Chi-com flu outbreak. They’re working to tool up here in America. And recent news of them shipping orders out of country has got the Trump Admin’s attention. It won’t happen any longer.
Because we need them here. Before it’s over, we may all be wearing masks in public until we can get everyone vaccinated.
As I wrote a couple of days ago, you should be wearing your N95 or better when out in public now as an infected person’s sneeze is good for almost 30 feet and three hours. That’s just in the air.
Stay at home unless you absolutely, positively have to go out. I’ll admit to driving around to see how things are going every day or two. But tonight, a narrow miss from another driver at an intersection got me to realize how much I’m risking by sight-seeing. That ends tonight.
Stay safe everyone. And stay healthy.
This sucks, but we will prevail.
Comments are closed.