Here we are, ten months into the pandemic, and there are more than 200,000 new cases a day and on average 2,000 new deaths. The plague that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages and it took two years to get it under control. When did that happen? After everyone started to stay home. The importance of protecting yourself, your family, and your community cannot be emphasized enough, and yet so many people continue to disregard the simple steps of masking up, staying many feet apart, frequent hand washing, and if you need to be in close, wearing a face shield.
The consequences of not doing so are raining down on us, Los Angeles being the current example of where reckless behavior brings one. There are oxygen tank shortages because hospitals are over capacity and patients are being held in temporary tents outside the hospital or worse yet, in an idling ambulance. They are ceasing presumed futile resuscitation in the filed rather than bringing to the hospital. There just is no room for that. And ICU beds are hard to come by, some hospitals with triple the number they normally have. It is sad and infuriating that we are on the cusp of having an intervention, a miraculous vaccine developed in record time using novel technology and yet before such a scientific breakthrough can work it's magic, many more will die. Thankfully my elderly parents have been able to stay safe until now and got their first dose of the vaccine this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment