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.
Exposure to police causes lasting harm to people’s physical and mental health? Maybe if they are violent criminals!
Thank you for the info. We are staying close to home. And we hear a lot of the same from our friends in hospitals.
Projections of 200K per day? Is that from the same kind of people who “projected” that coastal towns would be underwater by now?
Get everyone vaccinated? Is that from the same companies that make the vaccines that are killing babies? Think that’s a bunch of baloney? Do some research. Read the accounts of mothers whose babies are dead within a day after getting vaccinated. Vaccines from companies who have been given immunity from lawsuits for such things.
While a tiny, tiny few have bad reactions to vaccines, they prevent large scale infections that would kill or maim tens if not hundreds of thousands every year. Remember polio?
Leave the vaccine truther nonsense at an appropriate forum. This isn’t it.
This isn’t really a COVID-19 forum either, but that’s mostly what’s on it at the moment.
I didn’t bring up vaccines, you did.
The vaccine that they had for polio was drastically different from the vaccines of today, which have garbage in them. Heavy metals such as aluminum and mercury. They are injecting those right into the bloodstream. The polio vaccine was generally given orally with a sugar cube.
Since you like to investigate things, why don’t you research vaccine deaths? You should have plenty of time while stuck at home. Maybe then you won’t blow it off as “truther nonsense.” It’s not a tiny, tiny few. The mothers of the dead babies certainly wouldn’t call it just a “bad reaction.”
I assume you are getting your two little children vaccinated with all kinds of things. Do you really know what is being injected into their little bodies, or do you just take the governments word that it is fine?
I certainly hope that you don’t find out the hard way with a child who ends up dead or injured for life because of a vaccine.
Finally, ask yourself why some in the government are now wanting to mandate the HPV vaccination. That is for something that is not contagious like other diseases, it is transmitted through sex. Someone who is not vaccinated for that is not going to transmit anything freely by casual contact, so why a mandate?
Is anyone wondering why much of the medical equipment (respirators/ventilators, N-95 masks, etc.) are manufactured overseas (aka: China)?? Do you remember a democrat hoax called “Obamacare”?, “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” where ALL medical equipment would be TAXED (excessively) to “help pay” for Obumble(doesn’t)care? Much manufacturing of medical equipment was moved to AVOID THE EXCESSIVE TAX!
How do you like your domineering dumbocraps now? They never see a tax proposal they don’t love, their way of citizen control and micro-managing a manufacturing process.
The numbers just DO NOT add up.
Yes, Death is horrible, but compared to the number of people that die every year do to starvation, the Plain ole Flu and even Diarrhea; this Flu is nothing.
Why are we destroying our economy and losing our Rights over this FLU?
The numbers do NOT add up. The Borders are still open. We are still bringing in Foreign workers (H1B) to take or High paying middle class white collar jobs. Those Jobs pay up to $130,000 a year.
Those foreign workers are not being laid off or Fired at the same rate as American workers. SO what is going on ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9P5EI-qURQ&feature=emb_logo
I have also heard (patriot Source) that NY City is padding the number of deaths by counting other causes of death as Corona Deaths.
I’m with you g b,
Notice that there is very little info about RECOVERIES, a lot of hype about the deaths, the massive amount projected to die and have contracted it, the extreme contagiousness of it, but, those who have had a mild case of it have built up immunities and they are taking some blood platelets (?) from them to study and in some instances, help some severe cases because of the built-up immunity in the blood.
Remember how, in the ’50’s-60’s the kids shared the chicken pox, mumps and other mild childhood sicknesses to build up immunity? That is what has been found to happen with this too. I still don’t want to catch it, but I’m 66 and am struggling with MS, not necessarily unhealthy but a flu/fever really knocks me down.
I’m glad I got a pneumonia vaccine last fall and hope that helps keep me flu-free.
Rush and Mark Levin are pretty much saying just that. The numbers that are constantly thrown at us just don’t make sense. Is NY counting as deaths those that have the virus and have died, without verifying what they actually died of? Many or most have other issues they could potentially die from, but they don’t verify any of it. It’s understandable to some extent given the numbers of people, but then don’t just throw the numbers at us anyway. Rush also mentioned the fact that California has a fraction of the cases that NY has, despite a population of millions more, and they were probably the entry point of the majority of Chinese entering the country. Why is that?
Also heard today that the US Navy ship that is docked at NYC, with capability of 1000 patients, has a total of 20. Don’t seem to see this in general news anywhere. Why is that?
The ship Mercy was to take on the regular patients(emergency?)not the coronavirus patients, also they are having problems/difficulties of some kind getting the patients aboard. Perhaps as time goes forward they will take on more of a workload.
stick your “vac” up your a**. you deserve as much trust as today’s frequently bumbling idiots (fbi)
“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.” < No truther nonsense about it. Not conspiracy theory but information analysis. You've got a lot of people on this site that are life educated on many subjects and your insult to their intelligence by calling it "truther nonsense" is suspect. As you Jon are a great supporter of "guns save lives" anti-gunners call out that in the same manner. Suggest you open your eyes to more information out there that is truly connected AND TARGETED towards gun confiscation and total control i.e. vaccines that chip you and follow your every move. Science fiction proven time again to become the not to distant future reality. Stay safe and stay sane.