Our medical center is still inundated on a daily basis with dozens of cars full of potential covid patients awaiting testing, which can take hours. Our local hospital continues to operate their drive thru testing center out their back door, which happens to be our front door. If you happen to find yourself waiting in this line, please do not park and roam the property or enter the building for whatever reason. It is making stage 3 difficult to manage for the dozens of practitioners in our building. We continue to use virtual and remote resources to help manage your health, but at times it is necessary to do in person examinations or procedures that cannot be deferred indefinitely.
Numbers broadcast with regards to covid can cause some concern, because they are often reported without context. A happy child with sniffles seems to make National News with the same enthusiasm as does an elderly patient suffering dementia, diabetes who test positive for Covid. Severity or outcome dont seem to matter to news outlets. Our ICU occupancy rate in the province remains little different than other years and has the built in buffer room to accomodate a lot more if needed at this time. It would be so nice to know how many patients in a daily report are actually hospitalized or intubated, which would lend much ability for various agencies to plan instead of panic. As long as I have been in practice, we have always taught residents, that the third week of september seems to produce a deluge of pediatric infections for numerous reasons.
Here is some perspective.
In 2016 the World Health Organization has statistics on 56.9 million people who died.
The top cause of death for 15 million people was stroke and heart disease.
The top infectious cause of death on our planet is TUBERCULOSIS, followed by other infectious lung diseases, totalling about 3.5 million
Coronavirus has allegedly claimed just over 920K, but there has been confusion in classification and reporting.
Influenza claims between 250-500k lives on an annual basis, despite everything we do.
Road injuries claim about 1.4 million people annually.
Chronic lung disease mostly with smoking, claims about 3.7 million people
You may be surprised to find that diarrheal illness claims 2.4 million people yearly.
Coronavirus and its other respiratory cousins are definitely a problem. No one is claiming that it can be erradicated. The current strains, like dozens before them, will be incorporated into the fabric of human existence on our planet. The main reason for changing our entire way of life, is a fear that the slow creep can turn into a deluge, but it seems that in Canada, we have been able to step up and control at every juncture. Current models suggest that each infected person can infect one to two others during the course of their 3-14 day illness. There is no scientific basis to assume that a supposedly invisible asymptomatic pupil will take down an entire classroom or school. I urge everyone to demand better, more contextual reporting. Covid or other virus, the one thing we know for sure is that every year, our hospitals get overwhelmed with respiratory illness around Christmas with patients taking up space everywhere. I think a lot more people may finally notice this in the coming months.
Finally, flushots. Health department is not accepting orders for a few weeks, and then we tend to be the last to get them so we hope by end of october to start vaccinating. Please remember, they do not provide any protection against covid. Blood antibody testing is being made available to a small group of high risk patients. It is of value only in severe clinical situations. Private testing runs about $300 and is supposedly available.
We have uploaded a comparison tool for you to use under the latest editorial section.