Confronting the COVID-19 Virus: An ER Doctor’s Thoughts

Mark, the clear implication of your pointing to the higher (so far) death tolls is to suggest that the restrictions placed on people are overkill—and hence the issue is not as bad as thought. On the flip side, you’re arguing doom and gloom about “not enough” testing.

Again, only one of these can be true, and really, neither is. What people are getting at with the testing angle is that we have only so many test kits available (as one would expect), and hence we don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry getting tested for COVID-19 because they have a sniffle or hypochondria. It’s the same reason that when I had a slight tear on my pectoral muscle after a kid in youth group decided to wrestle me (I won, FWIW), the nurse took me through a battery of questions before deciding whether to send me in for an EKG (which they did) vs. going to the ER in an ambulance. You’re misinterpreting standard triage—you don’t want to spread limited resources among the whole population if you don’t need to.

That’s what Birx and the LA contact were in effect saying, and that’s backed up with how Birx actually got a test when she showed some signs—she was prioritized in triage because of her central role in fighting this.

So brother, take a deep breath, things are going about as well as they can medically, but understand that if we don’t take steps to reduce the transmission rate (and Ro), things will go to H*** quickly.

I love you brother. Have a great day.