This Is Not The Flu--Anecdotal Stuff
Michael Snyder has a blog at Zerohedge that provides ... anecdotal stuff, to try to drive home the concept that so many still fail to grasp: THIS IS NOT THE FLU. Yes, I'm aware that Snyder thrives on alarmism. Nevertheless ...
The blog is titled It's Not "Just The Flu": Here's Why You Definitely Don't Want To Catch COVID-19 . He begins with a general description that contains an important reminder: people don't "recover" quickly. Even with chloroquine treatment from Doc Didier, the patients too 5-6 days to recover. Without it, it takes much longer. That alone should tell you that this is different from any flu most of us have had experience with. I've edited out hyperbolic terms that don't come from the patients:
Can you imagine being in “blinding pain” for weeks, constantly gasping for air as you feel like you are being suffocated, ...? As you will see below, coronavirus survivors are telling us about their ... ordeals, and they are warning us to do everything that we can to avoid this virus. Of course they are the lucky ones. ... So those that survive should consider themselves to be very fortunate, but many of those same individuals will be left with permanent lung damage.
This virus attacks the respiratory system with a ferocity that is shocking doctors, and those that are still attempting to claim that COVID-19 is “just like the flu” need to stop, because they are just making things worse.
He then presents first person accounts from five survivors, ranging in age from 12 to 55. Well, no first person account from the 12 year old--she's on a ventilator, currently in stable condition. The accounts describe people fighting for their lives. I remember the worst flu I ever had, when I was in my mid 30s. I was so weak that I literally crawled down the hall to the bathroom and back. But I didn't feel the way these people describe it. And I was over it in a few days. I didn't even miss a full week of work.
Snyder concludes with this:
At this point, even doctors and nurses are “scared to go to work” …
Doctors and nurses on the front lines of the fight against the coronavirus in the United States say it’s “the first time” they’ve been scared to go to work. With a shortage of personal protective equipment, some have resorted to using bandanas to cover their faces.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever been truly scared to come to work, but despite being scared we are trained to save lives and we’re committed to doing that,” Dr. Cornelia Griggs, a surgeon in New York City, told “CBS This Morning.” “I’m embarrassed to say, but prior to this, my husband and I had never gotten around to writing a will, but this weekend that became one of our to-do list items.”
Here's a story about another doctor, in Detroit--Facing Shortage, Neurosurgeon Sews Masks From Vacuum Cleaner Bags :
Last Wednesday night, my younger sister asked me to overnight her three dozen vacuum cleaner bags. A neurosurgeon, Rachel was worried about the dwindling supply of surgical face masks at her hospital. She’d been told to do her rounds without a mask, to save precious supplies for health-care workers in the emergency department and Intensive Care Unit providing direct care to COVID-19 patients.
Of course, she realized that she could be an asymptomatic carrier, doing her rounds and infecting her patients. Thus the vacuum cleaner bags.