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My dad is an ICU doctor treating COVID-19 patients. In the past WEEK he has set more “I’ve never seen a heart rate/RBC count/etc. like this” records than in his decades-long career. What this virus does to the body is like “sticking your finger in an electric socket.” Stay home.
He had a patient who needed 8 blood transfusions in a morning even though he wasn’t bleeding. The coronavirus was just eating his red blood cells faster than his bone marrow could make them. It’s fucking mystifying and brutal.
EIGHT. Eight blood transfusions.
If you are lucky enough to make it off a ventilator (the equivalent exertion required for that is running a marathon without training), you will likely get put on dialysis and a feeding tube next. It’s a nightmare. It’s hell. It’s what you’re risking on your beach day.
Young, healthy people are dying from a COVID-19 effect called a "cytokine storm." Basically, you make it off a ventilator (maybe!), you get your appetite back a little, you think you're turning a corner, and then your immune system rips through your lung tissue and you drown.
The other common way young people are falling off the face of the earth from this are the random strokes it causes. Talking one minute, stroking out the next, and then the nurses have to go through the cell phone to find "Dad" because "Mom" usually insists on coming.
There have been a few "Papa Bear"s or "Daddy-O"s in the cell phones who have tried to come in to hold the bodies.
They can't, of course. You die alone from COVID. And you will be buried alone. Stay home.
Send this thread to any idiot fucker who posts an Instagram at the beach or a crowded park. Tell them my dad says see you later.
Also have an advanced directive because a lot of fiancés and parents are being put in UNCOMFORTABLE situations deciding. Truly, before you head to the crowded beach or nail salon or bowling alley, decide if you're a chest compressions guy or feeding tube vegetable queen.
Healthcare workers: Share your stories (without identifiable details obviously) from the front lines. People are GALAVANTING out and about. Explain to them what they're facing. Or worse, what they're doing to a loved one.
Aside from practicing social distancing, which is MORE than enough, here's how you can help frontline workers in the fight against this pandemic: https://www.directrelief.org/emergency/coronavirus-outbreak/
And here's how you can donate directly to frontline workers in the overwhelmed New York City hospital system, the epicenter of the outbreak in this country: https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/donate/?notification
My dad wants you to know he made really good polenta tonight.
I woke up to a lot of Trump people saying this isn’t true. I wish you were right! Here’s Sanjay Gupta going over the case of an otherwise healthy baseball player in his 30s who was feeling fine then rapidly declined and died in his bed of COVID: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/05/health/young-people-dying-coronavirus-sanjay-gupta/index.html
We won’t know the body count for a long time because so many young people are dying at home and not being entered into an official tally. You feel fine, you get a little cough, MAYBE you go to the doctor, you get sent home (“you’re young!”), you recover, you take a turn, goodbye.
Even if it doesn’t happen to you and you’re just a carrier, since you’re spreading it, it could happen to a buddy, or to a stranger who walks by you, or someone who brushes up against something you touched. This is a once in a lifetime emergency and your boredom can be lethal.
What people treating covid patients know is that pictures of the packed beach means some people in that crowd are going to get pulled choking off a ventilator in about two weeks and either live or die and they could have avoided that by just taking a walk.
I’m not going to do interviews about this because I am certainly not the story, so here’s what I’ve said publicly about my dad’s work before I knew his observations would be so galvanizing: https://twitter.com/bessbell/status/1250073185518858249?s=21 https://twitter.com/bessbell/status/1250073185518858249
The most devastating thing about this thread is the number of people who are desperately trying to deny it in the comments. This is happening in reality even if you insist it isn’t. Listen to doctors and scientists and nurses, not conspiracy theorists. For your own sake.
If your relatives or friends are pushing covid-denial narratives over reality, they can read more reporting about overwhelmed hospitals in Coronavirus hotspots here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/rural-hospital-coronavirus-covid-19-louisiana-new-orleans
