In one radio commentary today someone theorized that the huge mortaility figures in Italy and China may well be the result of the omnipresent air pollution in both places. I am well aware of the problem in China and also Northern Italy is pretty well known for often rather very bad conditions. They said that basically most people living in those areas have already got bad lung conditions without knowing about it. Therefore, the effect of the virus on them may be a lot higher than it is in other places.
It is interesting to see that case figures in Austria are reducing on a low level, whereas they are still climbing linear in Switzerland. Austria has a total shut down, Switzerland has refused to do that.
And if you are all done …
Being miserable makes creative
Very interesting points made in a briefing by my head of department today:
MedEwok wrote:
The one country that is expected to be most likely to overwhelmed next in Europe is the UK We are preparing for possibly treating UK patients by next week. Alternatively, other areas of Germany might (locally) reach their ICU capacity, in which case we would take patients from these areas. We currently have four entire ICUs empty and ready to treat patients.
Is there really such collaboration on the EU level? If so, very good, and somewhat unexpected considering the rather selfish behaviour of most countries so far.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Is there really such collaboration on the EU level? If so, very good, and somewhat unexpected considering the rather selfish behaviour of most countries so far.
No, I don’t think this works on EU level. Rather, it is down to the initiative of individual doctors or medical organisations.
An EU wide register of ICU beds would make sense to use capacity optimally. We have something like this Germany-wide, although participation is voluntary.
Now, Italy and Spain have enough capacity so this is no longer necessary
That might be true regarding ICU/ventilator capacity, but is certainly not true regarding manual capacity (health personnel). There are large teams there from Russia and Ukraine as well as Norway, (probably Germany as well?) and they bring their own equipment along.
The one country that is expected to be most likely to overwhelmed next in Europe is the UK We are preparing for possibly treating UK patients by next week.
That would be absolutely astonishing… Most UK hospitals still have spare ICU beds; the ones filling up are in the few spots which have been badly hit, and e.g. London has just opened a new 4000 bed hospital which will be purely for ventilator patients, so shipping people to Germany using any of the possible means is really off the table.
I don’t think so- commercial aviaton will eventually be resumed,and nobody is going to test everybody.. For GA and in Estonia, the autohrities seem to treat GA pilots the same as commercial pilots- i.e its permitted to fly abroad for maintenance etc. and come back without mandatory guarantine.
It’s going to take a while though to build back up to previous levels. I don’t see jobs for new airline pilots for a long time…
Changes in social norms will be interesting too. Some countries like their social kissing 
MedEwok wrote:
The current situation remains highly unpredictable, depending on factors like if and when restrictions are followed and eased. Currently we are, at least locally, on track to survive this crisis with one black eye.
It does look as if the biggest fear so far has been averted by the lockdown measures: the overwhelming of the hospitals. That as I understand was the main goal of all the lockdowns, seeing what happens when this does happen as it did in Italy.
The big danger now is that immediately now voices grow shriller who ask for a return to “normal” so the economy won’t collapse e.t.c, well, the moment they release people from lockout, the numbers will go up again. Apparently this is what happens in China now. So we need to keep locked down for the forseeable future until either we have treatments or vaccines. Or until we have testing capacity so we can test everyone in order to figure out where we really stand in this, who is immune already and if they still are contageous after they pass the illness.
@Medewok, do you already have the blood tests in use?
Very interesting update and point of view Ewok,
From the NYT website it seems as if Germany has a higher number of cases per capita, but lower deaths. I wonder what is the main driver of this. Obviously quality of healthcare perhaps, or peoples general health.
Peter wrote:
That would be absolutely astonishing… Most UK hospitals still have spare ICU beds; the ones filling up are in the few spots which have been badly hit, and e.g. London has just opened a new 4000 bed hospital which will be purely for ventilator patients, so shipping people to Germany using any of the possible means is really off the table.
I too would be astonished if this came to pass, just relaying what was said in the briefing by a person who’s very high up in the medical chain of command and has lots of contacts abroad. Personally, I think it the curve will flatten in the UK in a way that will make sure we won’t need to treat UK patients. Even if we could take some, the logistics of getting them here would still be very difficult.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
It does look as if the biggest fear so far has been averted by the lockdown measures: the overwhelming of the hospitals. That as I understand was the main goal of all the lockdowns, seeing what happens when this does happen as it did in Italy.
The big danger now is that immediately now voices grow shriller who ask for a return to “normal” so the economy won’t collapse e.t.c, well, the moment they release people from lockout, the numbers will go up again. Apparently this is what happens in China now. So we need to keep locked down for the forseeable future until either we have treatments or vaccines. Or until we have testing capacity so we can test everyone in order to figure out where we really stand in this, who is immune already and if they still are contageous after they pass the illness.
Agree that the fact that the measures have worked does not mean one can relax them immediately, on the contrary. The difficulty now is to relax them ever so slightly that you don’t riso overwhelming the system two weeks later. If we could reduce daily infections below a certain threshold, contact tracing for all new infections would work again with a high reliability and restrictions could be eased accordingly.
Unfortunately, some politicians seem to think that when enough masks are available, social distancing can be eased, but you need both masks and 2 m distance for optimal effect.Mooney_Driver wrote:
@Medewok, do you already have the blood tests in use?
I assume you mean the antibody test? Yes, that is already available. A staff member from my wife’s practice was tested with it last week. We are not yet performing mass testing with it, though.
