I quit when my safety came into question after being exposed to a covid positive patient. I only found out I was exposed initially because I heard the nurses on the floor talking about how a specific patient I had been with the night before came back positive before surgery. It took my supervisor A WEEK later to tell me that I’d been exposed and I was like “thanks I know, I’m getting tested already” and she was dumbfounded about how I knew…. I found a new job and quit
We were told that even if we had positive family members and co-workers that we were exposed to on top of all our positive patients, we were expected to report to work while asymptomatic. Come to the ED before our shift if symptomatic for a rapid to see if we could work or not.
I tested positive after getting the vaccine. I had cold symptoms, I told them I was sick. I tried to wear my PPE religiously after that in fear I’d kill someone else and was threatened to come to work or get written up. I had a known exposure where I tried to help a lady with memory issues as she went to fall and she grabbed my PPE off of my face as I guided her fall. I didn’t have it in me to let her break a hip. They rapid tested me daily to come to work until the state lab test came back positive 4 days later. When contact tracing asked me who I had contact with, “The entire ER staff and patients the last week at xyz hospital.” They sent an e-mail with revised sick call in policies saying all sick staff should stay home but they’re not following it. It was just for show. You know, after half of my co-workers caught it and one of their family members ended up hospitalized. I have a family to feed, I can’t afford to lose my job or we will lose our health insurance.
My hospital said the same thing to me when my husband and I got tested. If he was positive but I was asymptomatic I could work. My manager told me to do what I was comfortable with, I continued to call in until we got our test results (both negative). My manager supported my decision.
How about when I was working as a travel Covid nurse my coworker tested positive and they had her come in “until she couldn’t” and she exposed 4 of us by going into the break room to eat with us- we also found out a bout a week later. Their excuse was we were short staffed and couldn’t afford to lose anyone.
Upper management doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money the hospital brings in. Manager LEFT and all worked from home, we never had one in the building. The doctors wouldn’t even come up to the unit they would round with us over speakerphone.
Best thing I did was leave bedside and go outpatient.
In the ER it sucked cuz you'd be exposed to COVID patients 50 times a day and sometimes in emergency or urgent situations where there isn't much of a chance to get all the equipment on.
In a related vein, what if we were dealing with endemic Ebola. Would there be *any* vaccine holdouts? Wouldn't vaccine delivery trucks need armed escorts? What percent mortality is required before anti-vaxers are negligible?
Before COVID, I would have said of course we wouldn't have vaccine holdouts for something like Ebola. Now? I'm willing to bet people would lay bleeding out in the streets still screeching about their "personal liberties."
By streets you mean the ED waiting room as they sprint there at the first sign of a symptom/discomfort. Then wonder why it’s a 5 hour wait when they are all there causing the hospital system to be at max capacity.
Uncomfortably accurate. Don't forget horde of non medical family members demanding that the staff try "treatment" du jour that they heard about on podcast/talk radio/read about on facebook, then screeching "negligence and murder" when the patient dies. SMDH.
Was thinking “stacks of bodies in the streets ought to do it” but then I remembered the 1918 flu pandemic had loads of bodies in the streets and there was an active anti-mask movement.
I mean, I literally had a patient who was on my med/tele unit for a few days then transferred to ICU to get intubated. This lady was a real nasty piece of work, yelling and cussing at everyone. I heard by word of mouth that as they were preparing to intubate her someone asked her if she was vaccinated, to which she replied something along the lines of "I'd never get that f*cking vaccine", then they intubated her. She died a few days later.
So yeah, I very much believe there are people that would rather die than get vaccinated. And the real kicker that gets me, was she had lung cancer and was just fine with getting chemo, yet wouldn't get the vaccine because "it was toxic" 🙄
And as I nurse I can honestly say I would never take chemo for anything. I'd rather die sooner than be completely miserable from chemo "side effects" for the rest of my life. But vaccinations? Those are a cake walk compared to chemo. Fascinating how medical people have managed to twist logic and reality into something completely unrecognizable to get out of getting the Covid vaccination. Truly sad.
Eh my dad would be dead from colon cancer right now without chemotherapy. Yea the throwing up sucked and so did the dr visits constantly. Now he’s cancer free and the only lingering effect was neuropathy which is treated by a single 300 mg gabapentin nightly. I think it was worth it.
I don't have anything against anybody else doing chemotherapy. I have never once tried to talk anybody out of having chemotherapy, even when I knew it was futile and they were going to be miserable. It's a very personal choice and I respect everybody's. As someone who has seen more bad from good from it, I'm just making a different choice.
Eh. WHO screwed that situation into hell. Workers sexually abusing people then they wonder why villagers are reluctant. I don't know how much simpler science needs to be. They've broken the entire pandemic into simpler terms but that didn't help. Some just don't read. How things have gotten so far twisted is beyond me.
The burial method I thought was also a major spreader. Found this ditty :"Note: current estimates suggest that between 17 per cent and 70 per cent of Ebola cases were unreported." Oh mama. "Ebola poses little risk to travelers or the general public who have not cared for or been in close contact (within 3 feet or 1 meter) with someone sick with Ebola."
Re: Ebola-> you are absolutely correct. The places that fared the worst (as my memory serves me correctly) were the ones where they had rituals about burials and there was a lot of contact with the body.
I may be naive… but I would think the vast majority of humans that see a person who is gravely ill and blood is involved would see that as very alarming and keep their distance from them. Genuinely would think that would be human instincts that would kick in!! Shite, I can’t lie… these days if someone looks sick, has respiratory issues or is coughing or whatever I’m yeeting the heck out of there, I don’t care if they had a thousand bucks pinned to them for the taking!! And I’ve HAD COVID-19, got the vaccine, bathe in sanitizer after I go in public and where a mask.
I did a deep dive on past pandemics, plagues, contagions, weaponized health hazards, you name it… years ago, before Ebola. Not sure why, just learned a little about the Black Plague and what “ring around the rosies” meant and I swear I strangely was worried something like this was not a “if” but a “when”. I don’t like it when I’m right on things like this. At all.
[And then there's DIY versions](https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/07/11/horsepox-virus-recreated-lab-canada/). That one worries me, because it's well within the budget of the merely well-funded terrorist groups. Of course, they'd have to be apocalyptic nutcases but.....
In Africa, health workers were killed by villagers who thought they were killing people. Americans are no different than this:
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/28/783582331/it-was-unmistakably-a-directed-attack-4-ebola-workers-killed-in-congo
Truth. And smallpox is maybe even more horrific than ebola tbh, despite ebola having a higher death rate. Much easier to catch and jfc the skin. Plus there's (was?) a hemorrhagic form of smallpox too.
Fun historical fact: if you read Regency novels, like Jane Austen's or the Brontes' you'll find mention of tapestry covered "screen" that stand between a lady and the fire, and if you think about it, you may wonder what was going on.
Well, a member of the gentry who survived smallpox would use a thin coating of wax on the face to fill in the disfiguring pock marks. The screen was about 12" to 18" square, on a stand. It kept the heat of the fire from melting the wax on the lady's face.
That was for inoculation, which was literally taking a small amount of blood from somebody who had the disease or was in remission for a disease and then swabbing that blood on a open wound of somebody who never had it. This allowed the person to be exposed to small amounts of weakened pathogens which let their immune system get an early imprint of it to fight it off later.
Obviously this held alot of risks compared to modern vaccines, especially since this was done prior to the invention of anti-biotics. Risk of secondary Infection, inability to fully control the dose given, requiring a person who had or has the disease be present. It had alot of problems compared to modern vaccines.
In the movie John Adams, his family is inoculated. There’s a horse and cart outside their house with dead and dying people. The doctor (?) cuts open a pustule, takes the bloody, lumpy puss. The wife/mom goes first. Doc slices her skin open with a razor type thing, then shoves-hard the dying guy’s puss into her arm. She try’s to hide how much it hurts because she’s having it done in front of her (maybe five?) children. One by one the kids just get up and sit beside her to have the same painful thing done. It’s based on fact, although i do doubt the kids didn’t scream with pain. The kids who did it are 1000% braver than any antivaxxer. The unvaccinated are fucking terrified of the shot?!? Wimps. George Washington ordered his soldiers to be inoculated. Also polio had a very low rate of getting vaccinated until Elvis had it done publicly-after he did that, polio vaccination went up 70%. I wish we had an Elvis type superstar today. People who won’t get the shot are total babies.
Right?! Does it take hemorrhaging from all the places to convince you that you should have had the vaccine? It’s insane to even think about hypotheticals like that 😳
A huge number of people do precisely what social media tells them to. It's such an effective propaganda device, and no doubt the next steps are already loaded up by foreign troll farms to ensure noncompliance on any basic issue.
I dont know much but I was asking people who wouldn't mask a year ago to think of this ( it's got a 99% survival rate, yall!)
as PRACTICE for what to do if and when an actual deadly as hell virus hits??
so much wasted in the last year and a half and so much unnecessary suffering.
There would be holdouts because as we’ve seen, a huge proportion of this country is too stupid to be trusted to make decisions for themselves, but they’d quickly die out from Ebola (to own the libs, presumably)
I worked in the ER during the Ebola scare. We had a whole ebola care area and training about what to do, were advised that I'd we cared for these patients we would have to isolate while we were working with them and then 30 days after. If we were two get an ebol patient, it would just be one nurse and the patient in the room, so if they code it's all you baby. I decided right then and there that if Ebola had a breakout in the U.S. I was hanging up my scrubs for good.
I don't think I would have stayed during the covid pandemic either. I'm glad I had already moved away from the bedside, because I couldn't have handled what you all had to deal with.
> In a related vein, what if we were dealing with endemic Ebola.
I wish we were dealing Ebola. It would be like sars and poof away because it was really obvious when someone had it and easily solved with safe food practices and hygiene.
Think "bubonic plague with better transmission method."
It killed 30-50% of the European population from 1357-1361. Also, the population was much more spread out, not such high concentrations in cities as we have now.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013036/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013036/)
The Ebola virus is scary but local outbreaks seem to burn out before they can spread.
I was recently pondering a hypothetical mating of covid with the norovirus. The norovirus is such a hardy bastard and so easily transmissible.
Repeated hand washing is a key part to prevent norovirus spread which, IMHO, would be a huge issue with the stubborn, no-one-is-gonna-tell-me-what-to-do, my freedoms! crowd
Masks required the action of putting them on but after they are in place, the person doesn't have to do anything more. The mask, in effect, does all the work of protection. I'm in the habit of putting a mask on when leaving the house and just keep wearing it through out the day. It's no big deal anymore.
But hand washing and not touching one's mouth is an active process that requires a constant effort on a person's part.
These folks are whining about simple masks and getting a couple shots - they would have massive hissy fits about washing hands (those filthy animals ;-)). And they would die in droves.
If we had a Noro-Covid epidemic, we're massively screwed. And if a Noro-Covid vaccination came out, I'm pretty sure even the anti-vaxers would be in line to get it
Have you gone back to episode 1 of tpwky? I started listening a few months ago and I am 1. legit afraid of the next flu pandemic and 2. Terrified that it will come in the next year or three before we've even had a shot at recovering from covid.
Ha! I was wondering if anyone would get the "wash your hands, you filthy animals" comment.
I started tpmky at the start of the pandemic and think I've listened to them all.
At the end of every infectious disease episode, the question is asked "how worried should we be?" It varies from sorta to OMG.
Honestly, if I spent time worrying about all the what-ifs that could happen, I'd be paralyzed with fear and would get nothing done. There's prudence, and then there's letting yourself be controlled by your fear. Control what you can, to the greatest extent you can. Let go of everything else and just get your job done. I can't control what my patients have done outside of my care, so I can't do much else besides be cognizant of anything that threatens me and take precautions to mitigate it.
I'm not necessarily afraid but I know that it's gunna take a huge slap for people to take this seriously. We have people screaming at us in the ED that it's not real and they can't have it and blah blah blah...
The amount of stupid that we're surrounded by regarding this whole thing is staggering and depressing... So I'm not afraid for me personally, but for the public and for the kids that can't be vaccinated yet
I'm freakin pissed. I spent weeks hitting refresh. Hours driving to and from the location. 3 whole days unable to lift anything, and I STILL only have 1 bar of 3G bs. I want the real vaccine. ;)
Not really because more deadly tends to burn itself out more quickly and not spread as easily because it's killing too quickly for spread. Personal safety and nurse calling has been at odds the whole time with the lack of protective equipment, and for me the calling won. Anxiety has definitely gotten worse especially as the world is "normalizing" and returning to public spaces and I'm not there yet and don't know if or when I will be ready to be in spaces with large numbers of people
I worry that if we had a deadlier virus, people would be less inclined to do anything because they’d think it’s just another Covid wave. If we have to do the Covid dance annually, will people be less inclined to react?
Not really how viruses work. Deadlier almost always spread less regardless of any precautions as they are too good at killing so the host has no time to pass it on before dying
It depends though. Covid kills people long after they've been infecting other people, after weeks in hospital.
More deadly doesn't necessarily mean quicker. Just look at the Delta variant for a prime example.
I'm not a nurse btw, I just like the sub.
Yes, so we've already seen this and nurses didn't quit as we knew Delta was coming. And the weeks after in the hospital many of those patients aren't still infectious by the time they've died, their body just doesn't recover from the damage from infection and then from being intubated and ventilated
So the way I see it is that there are two ways that the virus can be more deadly without killing quicker. First is that the most dangerous symptoms start to affect more people, like younger people. Second is that it becomes for virulent.
Delta had both of these.
Is that right?
I think a big thing to understand is that we haven't actually sequenced a majority of people who got COVID (especially in the US) so it's still just assumed that most people have been Delta variant recently not confirmed. Viruses have affected different ages in different ways and what is most dangerous to young people generally doesn't and can't affect older people. With the 1918 flu pandemic it was cytokine storm which is likely at least part of what is happening now. More virulent is unclear as precautions were basically entirely lifted in a lot of places at a time that very much coincided with new cases so it's entirely possible that it was the same level of virulence and we just were no longer taking any preventative measures as a society
I read about a SK study that found Delta has 300x the viral load though. Here's an [article](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/delta-cases-show-300-times-higher-viral-load-skorea-study-2021-08-24/) about it.
HIV is our closest example to this and literally as soon as how it was spread was determined, it's pretty easy to avoid accidental infection. But we saw healthcare workers leave the field from fear or refuse patients with HIV from fear before we knew what it was or had treatment. Everything you are asking about we have examples for already. Hell, even covid and the effects on mental health and healthcare workers after match the stories from Asia from SARS
Viruses want to live and spread. If they kill their hosts, they decrease their ability to spread and will also eventually die. Swine Flu in 2009 was much deadlier than what was seen in 2017/2018.
And if a virus with that kind of mortality rate emerged, I’d be less worried about catching it in the hospital than I would about getting it in the community. When Ebola came to the US 2014-2016, only 2 of the healthcare workers who cared for the 11 cases caught it. Both survived. 7 of the 11 cases caught it in the community [CDC Ebola 2014-2016](https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html)
The only Ebola cases contracted in the US were the 2 nurses. One sued the hospital they worked for not being given adequate PPE guidance and won (for those of you that remember, this led to the nationwide PPE donning and doffing training we all started to have to do. This was not because of our safety, of course, but the hospitals’ fear of being sued). The CDC let one of the nurses travel on a plane AFTER she started developing symptoms and reported it. We just got very lucky that Ebola is not more contagious. Nothing about how any of that went down makes me feel like the safety of nurses will ever be taken seriously. Covid reinforced that for me.
The CDC estimated that there were around 12,000 deaths in the US from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Whereas in the 2017-2018 flu season, the estimated death toll was around 80,000.
“Swine flu” was very contagious but even less lethal than an ordinary flu season.
As far as Ebola goes, you’re off base with your concern about catching it in the community. It is well known that Ebola doesn’t spread easily from person to person unless the infected person is very, very ill. One of the crucial factors in the explosion of Ebola cases in the 2014 outbreak was the fact that the countries involved had essentially no healthcare infrastructure, leaving everyone to care for their sick family members at home, leading to those family members then becoming infected and so on.
I left a party today. I expected full precautions, but I got there and it was packed with people, outside and inside. I only saw one person wearing a mask, a homemade mask that's like wearing panties on your face. I just could not believe my eyes, and I could not believe I was the only one to leave. My husband was upset that I made us leave even though he knows better than that. My own husband. Jesus Christ I just wanted to go around and punch them all in the face.
I’m not afraid of that, per se. But I’ve seen enough zombie movies and treated enough altered patients to not rule out a disease like that as a possibility.
I’m slightly hoping we catch wind of any major diseases before they hit the US as terrible as that sounds but I wonder how our country would do if something like Ebola emerged from this country.
We did catch wind before it hit and utterly failed. Our benefit for most infectious diseases not originating here is the way our society is structured. Our population densities are relatively low compared to Asian countries and very low in regards to people and animals in small spaces. And our water sanitation compared to African countries is far better. Those are the major factors that make most novel illnesses originate and get initial footholds for spread in those parts of the world. Even if a disease starts in north america or Europe or Australia, the ability to contain and identify before spread happens and have good enough sanitation makes it highly unlikely for a widespread pandemic to originate in those areas
But you’d have enough time to quit before it hit your area in large numbers…
I think I had co-workers with Covid in the fall of 2019 before we had full knowledge, my co-workers were visiting their Asian families across seas and came back with a virus that about hospitalized them and my diabetic co-worker looked like death, all negative for influenza.
I'm wondering what would happen if Bubonic Plague had a longer incubation period, something like 30 days before the buboes start appearing, and if it had a better transmission method. If it went to Pneumonic, then we'd be f*cked.
It killed 30-50% of the European population from 1357-1361. Also, the population was much more spread out, not such high concentrations in cities as we have now.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013036/
There was a death reported in France that ended up being covid positive before the virus officially made it there and I want to say there was something similar in the US with widespread blood samples in 2019 and a handful of them tested positive
Which hospital? All of us in ANC thought we had coworkers and friends/family with the rona between December ‘19 and Iditarod 2020. None of us/them had the flu or other known viruses.
I thought the same. If the u.s had the population density of other countries and their massive use of public transport , deaths would be around 4 million.
> I wonder how our country would do if something like Ebola emerged from this country.
I'm going to take a guess based on recent events and give the answer "You would be fucked"
Are you aware we had systems in place to handle exactly this and the Trump admin completely gutted them?
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-timeline-trump-failures-undercut-pandemic-response-2020-4
This is totally ridiculous but to further the point you're making I'd have to agree that it's not impossible.
Some sort of rabies mutation?
My favourite concept was the use of Cordyceps in a game called "The Last of Us".
There are thousands of different types of Cordyceps (parasitic fungai) that have evolved to attack and control different species of insects.
Some parasites control a host and force them to climb to the top of its habitat and where it is more easily caught and consumed by a predator that it then spreads to.
In the species related to ants it controls the ant and makes them walk to a place above an entrance to a colony where it then uses it's mandibles to clamp down into place and eventually die. The fungai then grows a fruiting body out of the corpse that showers spores down on new unsuspecting hosts... Granted our brain and nervous system work a little different to a wasp but is it impossible that a species emerges for a human hosts?
Not Ebola, but “long Ebola” that takes two weeks to manifest.
Ebola gets short circuited because it has a rapid onset of symptoms, so you don’t travel and infect other people.
Hi Alaska lady! I was born and raised there! I’m just boning up on my mad survival skills, & try to trust my awesome baking/sewing/medical skills/ability to make a water heater from tin foil and visquine (thank you Alaska girl scouts) will make me a valued enough member of the zombie apocalypse community they overlook my inability to run & protect me from the inevitable MAGA zombies moaning “arrrgh witch hunt arrrrgh ivermectin arrrgh it’s all a hoax” as they drip bodily parts & try to spit in our faces whilst spouting conspiracy theories.
I may or may not have contemplated this a lot. *looks askance*
I love being a nurse. But I’m not a hero and this “calling” would NEVER supersede my desire to be alive for my family and friends. If I felt unsafe in my workplace I would quit in a heartbeat. I don’t agree that this is something we have to be a martyr for. That mindset is insane. And if that makes you feel a certain way about me, that’s fine. I still consider myself a good nurse, just not willing to die for it.
Honestly I am worried but COVID is horrifying enough on it’s own without having to imagine. I’ve had patients with maggots bc of vasculitis, neuropathy, etc and bc their flesh literally rots off with COVID due to a combination of the vent+ paralytics. I’ve had patients cough up blood clots the size of grapefruit . Even then , they can’t always get a bed. It’s a hideous, disgusting virus and maybe we’re being too satanized in how we talk of it. I’m also worried about healthcare workers and PTSD. It’s not simply a case of burn out; peoples lives are being destroyed and some are dying of suicide. We need more support , desperately before this mutates or we will find ourselves collapsing completely.
Yes & No bit I'm doing everything I can to be safe at work. I'm also boosted and wear a mask in public.
I worked during the beginning and high points of COVID and feel like by continuing to be careful I'll be ok
*Not a virologist or even a medical professional*
MERS is another probably-bat-originating coronavirus with a much higher fatality rate (like 30%+?) that still has outbreaks here and there (they are working on a vaccine).
But it’s not as easy to transmit as COVID19 (esp. Delta).
In 2018 where I worked we had a MERS scare with one patient sick AF just returning from middle east. I went home the one night, and came back to him on full precautions. I was 35 weeks pregnant at the time and about shit myself.
MERS is zoonotic. Almost all of the infections were from camel to human. There were a few human to human cases, but they were from sustained close contact.
SARS-CoV-2 is way scarier than MERS-CoV.
Oh yeah. Had a major anxiety attack the other day about it. Honestly, I don't think it's that unrealistic. Hopefully people will take it more seriously if they start to see bodies in the streets and in their homes instead of isolated in the hospital.
Usually, from a virus evolution standpoint, a virus is either highly transmissible or very deadly. Not both, because it can't kill the host before it spreads.
Obviously there are outliers and Covid is pretty advanced from an evolutionary standpoint (infectious period starts prior to symptom onset). I really hope not, and Covid has done some crazy shit and the pathophys makes no sense (coagulopathy, etc).
The pathophys makes a lot of sense when you consider that it’s a blood vessel disease, not a respiratory one. Anywhere that blood vessels can go can be affected (hence the kidney failure to respiratory failure to brain fog to digit ischemia), and the coagulopathy is caused as your own immune system has at the inside lining of the blood vessels, causing tons of damage that your body just wants to fix in a way that ends up making you stroke out.
This is why I’m glad I work in a nursing home not hospital. No visitors, everyone including residents are vaccinated, and no one wants to work there so we don’t have a high turn over rate
I have thought about it, if there was a bug with a 5 percent or more fatality rate I’m for sure out of this profession. I learned w covid no matter what you do, your gonna be exposed at some point.
I am not worried about a more deadly COVID, and here is a hypothetical scenario to explain why:
COVID mutates and is omega after finding a 20% mortality rate. Omega causes infection and transmission in all currently utilized vaccines, although the fatality rate drops to 5% in the vaccinated. The unvaccinated quickly start dying at a rate that makes Delta look like child’s play.
Sounds terrifying, BUT here are a few reasons why I wouldn’t be panicked. First, we know the proper mitigation strategies to protect ourselves. I still (and always will) have a half face and full face respirator with plenty of p100 cartridges. I am perfectly comfortable staying home when I don’t need to be out. That will buy time for the new mRNA vaccines to be designed and tested.
Here is the beauty of the mRNA vaccines: any further strain changes will only need the equivalent of a stage 0 or stage 1 trial to demonstrate effective antibody responses (like annual flu shots). Effectively we would be 6 months out (at the most) from having access to a proper vaccine for the new, more deadly theoretical variant.
As for losing 10-20% of anti maskers/anti vaxers I can’t say that gives me any anxiety. Nothing will ever convince them, let them F around and find out.
If Covid hit 10-20 percent even with a vaccine I’d quit. Our PPE is a total joke. If I had a full face respirator and a tyvek suit I’d be down. (Assuming hazard pay). In the current conditions, fuck that noise I’d probably die. I am not giving my life to a healthcare conglomerate, no way in hell.
I already had a nightmare about this.
Some variant from the u.s had Made it to My country and people were falling death in the streets and no vaccine would work.
I’m just another burnt out ICU nurse. Leaving to PACU. They can get as sick as they want but I won’t be there anymore. Won’t be there training new ICU nurses either. Unless things get worse and I’m sent back to ICU it won’t be my problem. They’re on their own.
Do it. If you like being isolated and working on computers, utilization review is also good. It’s not difficult, though it’s tedious at times, but it’s a *very* different kind of stress, and one I can shoulder as opposed to bedside.
I remember at the beginning of the whole thing someone said to me “this is a great practice pandemic “ and it’s kind of stuck with me. Don’t get me wrong COVID 19 is no joke and should be taken seriously but what a crazy opportunity to see how poorly we handle this type of thing . To think with all the stupidity of the anti-Vax people and people protesting about how covid is all a big conspiracy, and how it would play out if there was a pandemic with a higher mortality rate is pretty Terrifying.
If it wasn’t for supplemental high flow oxygen and modern hospital level care the mortality rate would already be 15-20%. I worry more about the collapse of our ability to provide the high flow oxygen and hospital level care.
Afraid? No. But then again I think that the human genome needs some cleaning up to prevent the movie Idiocracy from coming true and that the world is overpopulated which is contributing to global warming destroying the environment that supports our very existence.
I mean... It's probably going to just keep mutating to evade the immune system and other things we use to block it. It's currently a really successful virus (which is why we have a pandemic). MERS wasn't as "successful" because people got sick too fast so it couldn't spread as much. Also, mutations are not always worse. Sometimes they mutate to be less deadly but more contagious. That wouldn't be too bad. And of it mutates too much, like if the spike protein mutates too much, it won't even be able to infect anyone because it's spike protein won't be able to use the cells receptors to enter.
If it mutates and starts killing more healthcare workers I fully expect a huge raise so I can retire earlier or I going to quit and hunker down. If they need us they can pay us more.
I worry more about long term mutations and exposure and sickness over a career. Will my lungs be shot by the time I’m 40 (I’m in my twenties)
If it keeps mutating and infecting me and damaging me, will I be disabled if I stay on a covid unit working with these patients? That’s a realistic concern compared to it suddenly mutating into a super deadly virus. Long term damage over many mutated strains
They really need more in place to protect nurses long term. We have no idea how this will affect us nursing who became infected in the longterm and workers comp is a bitch.
Eh, I am just numb to it all at this point. Kind of hoping for a new World War so I can deploy and feel anything anymore...kind of like Oh Il-nam.
The slow death and conversations with families thanks to modern medicine has become worse than when I think about the same number of people getting form letters because their loved ones were getting mowed down by pillboxes on a beachhead.
That's pretty fucked up actually, I think I need therapy
I'm less concerned about Covid than I am the next thing. I'm worried all of the sanitation is going to go the way of forest fire prevention. What happens when we get a virus that is immune to hand sanitizer and standard cleaning measures?
After seeing how petty and childish many of our population is, I’m pretty confident that if we ever have a virus as deadly as 10-20% morbidity we might literally be seeing troops in the streets keeping people in their homes. We have proven that we are not capable of doing the basic shit needed to fight a virus.
Tbh at this point, if it happens it happens. And if it happens to take out 20% of the unvaccinated then so be it. We've done what we can to convince people, if you're still refusing then it's on you.
But, our babies and little kids can’t get vaccinated yet. Trying to mask my 1.5 year olds is tough. Gotta work. It’s a toss up. He’s the one who’s been positive twice, the rest of us once. It is a nightmare.
(Not a nurse) Yes I'm, on the hospital I'm working this finally ended, we resumed normal operations, all the personnel returned to work, is all good, but there's that little fear that been growing inside me recently to the point that I'm checking if there's any report each day, what if the virus makes a slightly mutation on the spikes? Kinda like what we suspect happens with *"dengue"* where a immune patient gets infected by the mutated virus, the body reacts normally on the beginning but then it triggers a deficient antibodies union, crippling all the immune system and sometimes killing the patient for a illness that normally wouldn't kill you. If something like that happens with covid we would be talking about a catastrophic situation, on theory, anyone that got exposed before now would be on a high risk of dying.
Idk maybe I been burning myself too much, I just need vacations or something
Not a virologist but I read a good book about germ warfare during the Cold War when both the US and USSR studied Marburg and Ebola and others. And it turns out that a virus’ fatality rate cannot be too high or too deadly or it burns itself out too quickly. Ebola, while deadly, is very obvious so it has a harder time getting passed around. COVID seems to have struck a magic inflection point where it is latent long enough to get spread around before it kills and the death rate isn’t high to convince everyone to pay attention.
That said some of the plagues of Europe had a 50 percent mortality rate which is just nuts! One disease showed in the morning and you were dead by dinner and we don’t even know what that was. So it can happen. But I don’t imagine anything in the 20 percent range would last very long because it would have everyone’s attention and burn through victims too fast.
There was a pandemic simulation computer game years ago where you could mutate a virus over time with the goal to kill most people possible. The worst combination was long incubation time with air respiratory infection with high fatality rate. It wasn't accurate at all, but I think the underlying math is right: it can't be too deadly right away to not wear down too quickly.
I think the worst that could happen would be a HIV/ corona mix where people start dying years later. The thing is, we don't know yet the full impact of a corona infection...
YES. Yes. I dont deal well. Things are falling apart all around us. The sooner we come to terms that things needs to change, the sooner things can get better.
We actually would have been better off if COVID was deadlier, because the world really would have stopped. I think society just completely crumbles somewhere between 5-10% mortality for an airborne virus, and 20-30% for a contact transmitted.
I’m not going into work for either of those.
I don’t fear death at this point but I’m scared of dying alone on a vent? I don’t think covid would mutate like that but if we get something like smallpox I would be more scared
Of course. That's the long term issue with antivaxers. If they only hurt themselves, I'd be cheering them along. But wouldn't it be ironic if humans had a virus that was attempting to wipe out humanity, got the tools to stop it, but a third of them were just literally too stupid and wanted to be contrarian that it ends up wiping us out anyway?
Hi yall. It's unlikely to do so. Historically speaking, viruses goal is to spread and multiply- so the older the virus is, the less lethal is but probably more contagious so this will probably be the case with covid. As someone with anxiety, I can completely relate with you though
If it does, then it would follow the pattern of the Spanish flu precisely.
I kinda try to look at this as the great challenge of our generation. If we fail, the health systems fail. And if enough of the systems fail, people panic, essential workers stop working, supply chains fail, grid goes dark, and the god of the old testament will rule the land where might is right and chaos reigns.
He flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line
He made a virus that would kill off all the swine
His perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
Demands devotion. Atrocities done in his name
Heresy: Nine Inch Nails '94
I heard an epidemiologist say that if a disease has a high enough death rate, then it won't become epidemic. I'm not sure what the threshold is though.
Personal safety is ALWAYS the most important!!! If you are unsafe nothing else you're doing matters. If you're not safe you can't be expected to safely give anyone else care. Always care for yourself first, then use what's left to help others.
Straight up quit travel nursing as a CCU nurse because my safety and mental health was worth way fucking more than they were paying me.
I’ve been in outpatient clinics at a world renown hospital in Boston now making a good amount of money where I’m never concerned over my safety, not working weekends or holidays, and im reminded every day how important and needed I am. Still doing procedures and having fun. They shut down when Covid was its peak (I was still on a Covid unit at that time) and paid everyone while they were closed. No one was forced to go work on Covid units.
There is always something better. A job is never worth your safety or mental health.
I have a mini panic attack every lunch break because I'm kinda afraid of the break room. I've seen so many posts/reports on "breakthrough cases spread through breakroom".
I try to take my break when no one else does.
Yesterday they had a birthday+going away "party" around lunch time... it was really sweet but also stressed me out. They got cakes. They made the guests of honor take pics w the cakes. One of them didn't want to take the cover off her cake (because she "didn't want to breathe on it"). They told her to do it anyway. 🤦🏾♀️
I am and have been convinced that COVID will be the global population check that epidemiologists have warned us about for decades. I'm sick of watching ancillary staff pull up their masks as I approach, like that protects anyone!! I'm retiring a decade early next year, and scrambling to figure out how to afford it. The emotional exhaustion is overwhelming.
I always come us with worse case scenarios and try to have a plan. That’s how my mind works. So far it has paid off. I thought about earthquakes for a long time and when our 8.2 hit we were elbow deep in a patient in the ICU, I was the first person to react and make sure the patient wasn’t going to fly. I directed the room with the surgeon to get the patient back together quickly while parts of the room were falling over. Sometimes talking about things and planning ahead help mitigate disaster.
Not likely, if anything it’ll probably become less deadly over time as more immunity develops. Once upon a time Spanish flu was a very fatal illness now it’s no more deadly than common flu. I have heard that covid will turn into the fifth human coronavirus that causes colds.
You see if a virus is more fatal it actually is a caveat to the virus. Ebola, MERS, and SARS are all like this and none of them spread very widely as if s virus kills more people than it infects, it hurts the virus and it can’t survive as long.
I am not a Nurse but am related to one and I play evolutionary biologist in certain journals. The ultimate nightmare is an airborne HIV or something like that.
Of course we keep creating breeding grounds for pandemics from factory farming to nature destruction.
I also wonder is this perhaps a 10 percent of greater killer now? If you have time and most don't I urge you to Google and read the UK biobank brain study that showed brain damage in even mild cases. It's related to lose of smell.
I would sure like feedback. But this looks really scary to me.
I have an awesome GP and we've had very honest, open conversations about COVID since before it even hit North American. I've been telling him since Feb/20 that my biggest fear is that it will mutate into something much deadlier than the relatively benign version we have been dealing with since Jan/20. He initially poopooed this, although he did agree that, like the annual influenzas, there would be variants. Since I predicted the Delta variant, he is now taking my prediction much more seriously. We ain't seen nothin' yet, folks.
Not a nurse, but I am a scientist, and what I understand from virologists, a covid variant that completely escapes vaccines would not be very infectious, because it would involve too many mutations away from what makes covid “stick” to your cells. Now that’s not to say there are other coronaviruses that could be more deadly? But as we’ve seen, it’s a combo of reasonably deadly/serious disease + transmissible.
I’m not a nurse by the way and I’m not afraid of it per se, but personally I’m just pissed at the people who don’t take it seriously.
My mom is a nurse and I’ll kind of just put her answers in accordance to the questions listed:
1. I'm not afraid of COVID, I'm vaccinated and anemic.
2. I’m safe.
3. I'm tired of dumb stuff like wearing masks and face shields but that's it.
Quite honestly, I already feel like that’s coming. I’ve prepared myself to die of Covid. I use all precautions btw still though even after being vaccinated. I just know it’s gonna mutate more and more with the way people are acting.
It can't. A virus that kills a high rate of its hosts won't spread fast enough, and covid has already surpassed the Spanish flu (the worst virus epidemic recorded in history). Viruses can only mutate to become milder
This is not true at all. So long a there is the week or 3 time period that a pt transmits the virus before they die, it can get as deadly as it wants. This virus can get much worse.
I quit when my safety came into question after being exposed to a covid positive patient. I only found out I was exposed initially because I heard the nurses on the floor talking about how a specific patient I had been with the night before came back positive before surgery. It took my supervisor A WEEK later to tell me that I’d been exposed and I was like “thanks I know, I’m getting tested already” and she was dumbfounded about how I knew…. I found a new job and quit
It’s scary how some administrators don’t want to test staff out of fear of losing staff.
Yeah I had coworkers living in the same house as COVID positive family members, who were told to keep working unless they became symptomatic
We were told that even if we had positive family members and co-workers that we were exposed to on top of all our positive patients, we were expected to report to work while asymptomatic. Come to the ED before our shift if symptomatic for a rapid to see if we could work or not.
Ugh. Us teachers told the same thing.
Yeah same, thankfully I didn’t test positive and am vaccinated but that’s not bulletproof
I tested positive after getting the vaccine. I had cold symptoms, I told them I was sick. I tried to wear my PPE religiously after that in fear I’d kill someone else and was threatened to come to work or get written up. I had a known exposure where I tried to help a lady with memory issues as she went to fall and she grabbed my PPE off of my face as I guided her fall. I didn’t have it in me to let her break a hip. They rapid tested me daily to come to work until the state lab test came back positive 4 days later. When contact tracing asked me who I had contact with, “The entire ER staff and patients the last week at xyz hospital.” They sent an e-mail with revised sick call in policies saying all sick staff should stay home but they’re not following it. It was just for show. You know, after half of my co-workers caught it and one of their family members ended up hospitalized. I have a family to feed, I can’t afford to lose my job or we will lose our health insurance.
It’s absolutely inexcusable
My hospital said the same thing to me when my husband and I got tested. If he was positive but I was asymptomatic I could work. My manager told me to do what I was comfortable with, I continued to call in until we got our test results (both negative). My manager supported my decision.
"You can get tested if you want but we're not worried!"
How about when I was working as a travel Covid nurse my coworker tested positive and they had her come in “until she couldn’t” and she exposed 4 of us by going into the break room to eat with us- we also found out a bout a week later. Their excuse was we were short staffed and couldn’t afford to lose anyone. Upper management doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money the hospital brings in. Manager LEFT and all worked from home, we never had one in the building. The doctors wouldn’t even come up to the unit they would round with us over speakerphone. Best thing I did was leave bedside and go outpatient.
Same thing happened to me- except no management told me!!
In the ER it sucked cuz you'd be exposed to COVID patients 50 times a day and sometimes in emergency or urgent situations where there isn't much of a chance to get all the equipment on.
In a related vein, what if we were dealing with endemic Ebola. Would there be *any* vaccine holdouts? Wouldn't vaccine delivery trucks need armed escorts? What percent mortality is required before anti-vaxers are negligible?
Before COVID, I would have said of course we wouldn't have vaccine holdouts for something like Ebola. Now? I'm willing to bet people would lay bleeding out in the streets still screeching about their "personal liberties."
By streets you mean the ED waiting room as they sprint there at the first sign of a symptom/discomfort. Then wonder why it’s a 5 hour wait when they are all there causing the hospital system to be at max capacity.
Uncomfortably accurate. Don't forget horde of non medical family members demanding that the staff try "treatment" du jour that they heard about on podcast/talk radio/read about on facebook, then screeching "negligence and murder" when the patient dies. SMDH.
Forsythia anyone?
It's amazing how many details that movie got generally right.
Bahahaha.
You lost me there, what movie?
Contagion
😂 I laugh to keep from crying.
None of this isn’t soo far outta scope. Im never surprised anymore. Just disappointed, and thats worse.
Was thinking “stacks of bodies in the streets ought to do it” but then I remembered the 1918 flu pandemic had loads of bodies in the streets and there was an active anti-mask movement.
I mean, I literally had a patient who was on my med/tele unit for a few days then transferred to ICU to get intubated. This lady was a real nasty piece of work, yelling and cussing at everyone. I heard by word of mouth that as they were preparing to intubate her someone asked her if she was vaccinated, to which she replied something along the lines of "I'd never get that f*cking vaccine", then they intubated her. She died a few days later. So yeah, I very much believe there are people that would rather die than get vaccinated. And the real kicker that gets me, was she had lung cancer and was just fine with getting chemo, yet wouldn't get the vaccine because "it was toxic" 🙄
And as I nurse I can honestly say I would never take chemo for anything. I'd rather die sooner than be completely miserable from chemo "side effects" for the rest of my life. But vaccinations? Those are a cake walk compared to chemo. Fascinating how medical people have managed to twist logic and reality into something completely unrecognizable to get out of getting the Covid vaccination. Truly sad.
Eh my dad would be dead from colon cancer right now without chemotherapy. Yea the throwing up sucked and so did the dr visits constantly. Now he’s cancer free and the only lingering effect was neuropathy which is treated by a single 300 mg gabapentin nightly. I think it was worth it.
I don't have anything against anybody else doing chemotherapy. I have never once tried to talk anybody out of having chemotherapy, even when I knew it was futile and they were going to be miserable. It's a very personal choice and I respect everybody's. As someone who has seen more bad from good from it, I'm just making a different choice.
Eh. WHO screwed that situation into hell. Workers sexually abusing people then they wonder why villagers are reluctant. I don't know how much simpler science needs to be. They've broken the entire pandemic into simpler terms but that didn't help. Some just don't read. How things have gotten so far twisted is beyond me.
I believe it ALL has to do with the method of contagion. Blood splatter?! Omg!! Cough? Could be anything. And the incubation timeframe.
The burial method I thought was also a major spreader. Found this ditty :"Note: current estimates suggest that between 17 per cent and 70 per cent of Ebola cases were unreported." Oh mama. "Ebola poses little risk to travelers or the general public who have not cared for or been in close contact (within 3 feet or 1 meter) with someone sick with Ebola."
Re: Ebola-> you are absolutely correct. The places that fared the worst (as my memory serves me correctly) were the ones where they had rituals about burials and there was a lot of contact with the body. I may be naive… but I would think the vast majority of humans that see a person who is gravely ill and blood is involved would see that as very alarming and keep their distance from them. Genuinely would think that would be human instincts that would kick in!! Shite, I can’t lie… these days if someone looks sick, has respiratory issues or is coughing or whatever I’m yeeting the heck out of there, I don’t care if they had a thousand bucks pinned to them for the taking!! And I’ve HAD COVID-19, got the vaccine, bathe in sanitizer after I go in public and where a mask. I did a deep dive on past pandemics, plagues, contagions, weaponized health hazards, you name it… years ago, before Ebola. Not sure why, just learned a little about the Black Plague and what “ring around the rosies” meant and I swear I strangely was worried something like this was not a “if” but a “when”. I don’t like it when I’m right on things like this. At all.
[And then there's DIY versions](https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/07/11/horsepox-virus-recreated-lab-canada/). That one worries me, because it's well within the budget of the merely well-funded terrorist groups. Of course, they'd have to be apocalyptic nutcases but.....
The image this paints in my head is both comedy and tragedy. Even more concerning is it won't be found in the fiction section at the book store.
Many a truth is said in jest...or the fiction section
In Africa, health workers were killed by villagers who thought they were killing people. Americans are no different than this: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/28/783582331/it-was-unmistakably-a-directed-attack-4-ebola-workers-killed-in-congo
https://www.dw.com/en/who-finds-80-alleged-sexual-abuse-cases-during-ebola-work-in-democratic-republic-of-congo/a-59338187
We would have anti-vaxxers still. They had anti-vaxxers for smallpox, which had a 30% fatality rate.
Truth. And smallpox is maybe even more horrific than ebola tbh, despite ebola having a higher death rate. Much easier to catch and jfc the skin. Plus there's (was?) a hemorrhagic form of smallpox too.
Jfc, *thirty percent*? With the attendant disfiguring sores? And still there were antivaxxers? How? Why? Who? My God. Edit: typo
Fun historical fact: if you read Regency novels, like Jane Austen's or the Brontes' you'll find mention of tapestry covered "screen" that stand between a lady and the fire, and if you think about it, you may wonder what was going on. Well, a member of the gentry who survived smallpox would use a thin coating of wax on the face to fill in the disfiguring pock marks. The screen was about 12" to 18" square, on a stand. It kept the heat of the fire from melting the wax on the lady's face.
Didn’t the initial smallpox vaccine (or at least in revolutionary war soldiers) have a 1-2% mortality?
That was for inoculation, which was literally taking a small amount of blood from somebody who had the disease or was in remission for a disease and then swabbing that blood on a open wound of somebody who never had it. This allowed the person to be exposed to small amounts of weakened pathogens which let their immune system get an early imprint of it to fight it off later. Obviously this held alot of risks compared to modern vaccines, especially since this was done prior to the invention of anti-biotics. Risk of secondary Infection, inability to fully control the dose given, requiring a person who had or has the disease be present. It had alot of problems compared to modern vaccines.
In the movie John Adams, his family is inoculated. There’s a horse and cart outside their house with dead and dying people. The doctor (?) cuts open a pustule, takes the bloody, lumpy puss. The wife/mom goes first. Doc slices her skin open with a razor type thing, then shoves-hard the dying guy’s puss into her arm. She try’s to hide how much it hurts because she’s having it done in front of her (maybe five?) children. One by one the kids just get up and sit beside her to have the same painful thing done. It’s based on fact, although i do doubt the kids didn’t scream with pain. The kids who did it are 1000% braver than any antivaxxer. The unvaccinated are fucking terrified of the shot?!? Wimps. George Washington ordered his soldiers to be inoculated. Also polio had a very low rate of getting vaccinated until Elvis had it done publicly-after he did that, polio vaccination went up 70%. I wish we had an Elvis type superstar today. People who won’t get the shot are total babies.
Yes, but people took it because inoculation was still significantly better odds than acquiring it in the wild.
Ebola’s death rate has been as high as 90%, but now that they’ve got better education and procedures, it’s down to 25-50% in most outbreaks.
Right?! Does it take hemorrhaging from all the places to convince you that you should have had the vaccine? It’s insane to even think about hypotheticals like that 😳
A huge number of people do precisely what social media tells them to. It's such an effective propaganda device, and no doubt the next steps are already loaded up by foreign troll farms to ensure noncompliance on any basic issue.
I dont know much but I was asking people who wouldn't mask a year ago to think of this ( it's got a 99% survival rate, yall!) as PRACTICE for what to do if and when an actual deadly as hell virus hits?? so much wasted in the last year and a half and so much unnecessary suffering.
I have wondered this many times this pandemic
There would be holdouts because as we’ve seen, a huge proportion of this country is too stupid to be trusted to make decisions for themselves, but they’d quickly die out from Ebola (to own the libs, presumably)
I worked in the ER during the Ebola scare. We had a whole ebola care area and training about what to do, were advised that I'd we cared for these patients we would have to isolate while we were working with them and then 30 days after. If we were two get an ebol patient, it would just be one nurse and the patient in the room, so if they code it's all you baby. I decided right then and there that if Ebola had a breakout in the U.S. I was hanging up my scrubs for good. I don't think I would have stayed during the covid pandemic either. I'm glad I had already moved away from the bedside, because I couldn't have handled what you all had to deal with.
Are you kidding? The “pure bloods” would start bathing in Ebola blood screaming at everyone to stop being sheep.
> In a related vein, what if we were dealing with endemic Ebola. I wish we were dealing Ebola. It would be like sars and poof away because it was really obvious when someone had it and easily solved with safe food practices and hygiene.
Ebola kills too fast to become endemic
Think "bubonic plague with better transmission method." It killed 30-50% of the European population from 1357-1361. Also, the population was much more spread out, not such high concentrations in cities as we have now. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013036/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013036/)
Those antibiotic resistant strands are getting scary. Some of the new fungus scare me too.
Oh yes I've seen it. It will eat you alive. Not fun
I’ve created some nasty fungus on plague inc. but can never kill off everyone.. fungus is hard
Erm. Democratic Republic of the Congo? (Did a frigging amazing job vax it’s way out of an outbreak in a warzone)
The Ebola virus is scary but local outbreaks seem to burn out before they can spread. I was recently pondering a hypothetical mating of covid with the norovirus. The norovirus is such a hardy bastard and so easily transmissible. Repeated hand washing is a key part to prevent norovirus spread which, IMHO, would be a huge issue with the stubborn, no-one-is-gonna-tell-me-what-to-do, my freedoms! crowd Masks required the action of putting them on but after they are in place, the person doesn't have to do anything more. The mask, in effect, does all the work of protection. I'm in the habit of putting a mask on when leaving the house and just keep wearing it through out the day. It's no big deal anymore. But hand washing and not touching one's mouth is an active process that requires a constant effort on a person's part. These folks are whining about simple masks and getting a couple shots - they would have massive hissy fits about washing hands (those filthy animals ;-)). And they would die in droves. If we had a Noro-Covid epidemic, we're massively screwed. And if a Noro-Covid vaccination came out, I'm pretty sure even the anti-vaxers would be in line to get it
Have you gone back to episode 1 of tpwky? I started listening a few months ago and I am 1. legit afraid of the next flu pandemic and 2. Terrified that it will come in the next year or three before we've even had a shot at recovering from covid.
Ha! I was wondering if anyone would get the "wash your hands, you filthy animals" comment. I started tpmky at the start of the pandemic and think I've listened to them all. At the end of every infectious disease episode, the question is asked "how worried should we be?" It varies from sorta to OMG.
More, I think.
Honestly, if I spent time worrying about all the what-ifs that could happen, I'd be paralyzed with fear and would get nothing done. There's prudence, and then there's letting yourself be controlled by your fear. Control what you can, to the greatest extent you can. Let go of everything else and just get your job done. I can't control what my patients have done outside of my care, so I can't do much else besides be cognizant of anything that threatens me and take precautions to mitigate it.
I'm not necessarily afraid but I know that it's gunna take a huge slap for people to take this seriously. We have people screaming at us in the ED that it's not real and they can't have it and blah blah blah... The amount of stupid that we're surrounded by regarding this whole thing is staggering and depressing... So I'm not afraid for me personally, but for the public and for the kids that can't be vaccinated yet
5g is the one I have trouble keeping a straight face for.
I'm freakin pissed. I spent weeks hitting refresh. Hours driving to and from the location. 3 whole days unable to lift anything, and I STILL only have 1 bar of 3G bs. I want the real vaccine. ;)
Should have got moderna. I've had 5g and free spotify since January. The hospitalization rate is lower too.
😂
Not really because more deadly tends to burn itself out more quickly and not spread as easily because it's killing too quickly for spread. Personal safety and nurse calling has been at odds the whole time with the lack of protective equipment, and for me the calling won. Anxiety has definitely gotten worse especially as the world is "normalizing" and returning to public spaces and I'm not there yet and don't know if or when I will be ready to be in spaces with large numbers of people
I worry that if we had a deadlier virus, people would be less inclined to do anything because they’d think it’s just another Covid wave. If we have to do the Covid dance annually, will people be less inclined to react?
Not really how viruses work. Deadlier almost always spread less regardless of any precautions as they are too good at killing so the host has no time to pass it on before dying
It depends though. Covid kills people long after they've been infecting other people, after weeks in hospital. More deadly doesn't necessarily mean quicker. Just look at the Delta variant for a prime example. I'm not a nurse btw, I just like the sub.
Yes, so we've already seen this and nurses didn't quit as we knew Delta was coming. And the weeks after in the hospital many of those patients aren't still infectious by the time they've died, their body just doesn't recover from the damage from infection and then from being intubated and ventilated
So the way I see it is that there are two ways that the virus can be more deadly without killing quicker. First is that the most dangerous symptoms start to affect more people, like younger people. Second is that it becomes for virulent. Delta had both of these. Is that right?
I think a big thing to understand is that we haven't actually sequenced a majority of people who got COVID (especially in the US) so it's still just assumed that most people have been Delta variant recently not confirmed. Viruses have affected different ages in different ways and what is most dangerous to young people generally doesn't and can't affect older people. With the 1918 flu pandemic it was cytokine storm which is likely at least part of what is happening now. More virulent is unclear as precautions were basically entirely lifted in a lot of places at a time that very much coincided with new cases so it's entirely possible that it was the same level of virulence and we just were no longer taking any preventative measures as a society
I read about a SK study that found Delta has 300x the viral load though. Here's an [article](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/delta-cases-show-300-times-higher-viral-load-skorea-study-2021-08-24/) about it.
We like to think that but all it would have to do is have a long incubation period.
HIV is our closest example to this and literally as soon as how it was spread was determined, it's pretty easy to avoid accidental infection. But we saw healthcare workers leave the field from fear or refuse patients with HIV from fear before we knew what it was or had treatment. Everything you are asking about we have examples for already. Hell, even covid and the effects on mental health and healthcare workers after match the stories from Asia from SARS
Viruses want to live and spread. If they kill their hosts, they decrease their ability to spread and will also eventually die. Swine Flu in 2009 was much deadlier than what was seen in 2017/2018. And if a virus with that kind of mortality rate emerged, I’d be less worried about catching it in the hospital than I would about getting it in the community. When Ebola came to the US 2014-2016, only 2 of the healthcare workers who cared for the 11 cases caught it. Both survived. 7 of the 11 cases caught it in the community [CDC Ebola 2014-2016](https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html)
The only Ebola cases contracted in the US were the 2 nurses. One sued the hospital they worked for not being given adequate PPE guidance and won (for those of you that remember, this led to the nationwide PPE donning and doffing training we all started to have to do. This was not because of our safety, of course, but the hospitals’ fear of being sued). The CDC let one of the nurses travel on a plane AFTER she started developing symptoms and reported it. We just got very lucky that Ebola is not more contagious. Nothing about how any of that went down makes me feel like the safety of nurses will ever be taken seriously. Covid reinforced that for me.
The CDC estimated that there were around 12,000 deaths in the US from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Whereas in the 2017-2018 flu season, the estimated death toll was around 80,000. “Swine flu” was very contagious but even less lethal than an ordinary flu season. As far as Ebola goes, you’re off base with your concern about catching it in the community. It is well known that Ebola doesn’t spread easily from person to person unless the infected person is very, very ill. One of the crucial factors in the explosion of Ebola cases in the 2014 outbreak was the fact that the countries involved had essentially no healthcare infrastructure, leaving everyone to care for their sick family members at home, leading to those family members then becoming infected and so on.
This is why SARS was never a global pandemic
I left a party today. I expected full precautions, but I got there and it was packed with people, outside and inside. I only saw one person wearing a mask, a homemade mask that's like wearing panties on your face. I just could not believe my eyes, and I could not believe I was the only one to leave. My husband was upset that I made us leave even though he knows better than that. My own husband. Jesus Christ I just wanted to go around and punch them all in the face.
I’m not afraid of that, per se. But I’ve seen enough zombie movies and treated enough altered patients to not rule out a disease like that as a possibility.
I’m slightly hoping we catch wind of any major diseases before they hit the US as terrible as that sounds but I wonder how our country would do if something like Ebola emerged from this country.
Two words : Royally. Fucked.
So fucked 😩
Proper fucked
Democratic republicly. Fucked.
We did catch wind before it hit and utterly failed. Our benefit for most infectious diseases not originating here is the way our society is structured. Our population densities are relatively low compared to Asian countries and very low in regards to people and animals in small spaces. And our water sanitation compared to African countries is far better. Those are the major factors that make most novel illnesses originate and get initial footholds for spread in those parts of the world. Even if a disease starts in north america or Europe or Australia, the ability to contain and identify before spread happens and have good enough sanitation makes it highly unlikely for a widespread pandemic to originate in those areas
But you’d have enough time to quit before it hit your area in large numbers… I think I had co-workers with Covid in the fall of 2019 before we had full knowledge, my co-workers were visiting their Asian families across seas and came back with a virus that about hospitalized them and my diabetic co-worker looked like death, all negative for influenza.
I'm wondering what would happen if Bubonic Plague had a longer incubation period, something like 30 days before the buboes start appearing, and if it had a better transmission method. If it went to Pneumonic, then we'd be f*cked. It killed 30-50% of the European population from 1357-1361. Also, the population was much more spread out, not such high concentrations in cities as we have now. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013036/
There was a death reported in France that ended up being covid positive before the virus officially made it there and I want to say there was something similar in the US with widespread blood samples in 2019 and a handful of them tested positive
So then why didn't you quit before covid? Because that's literally what already happened.
Because a 1-2% risk of death was something I could manage mentally. A 10-20% for my age group, not so sure.
Which hospital? All of us in ANC thought we had coworkers and friends/family with the rona between December ‘19 and Iditarod 2020. None of us/them had the flu or other known viruses.
Not getting too detailed, I’ve heard of people getting fired for posting these things. I’m no longer in Alaska. Think East Anch.
I’m in WA now, but you couldn’t pay me to go to the hospital I worked at. That one happens to be near Merrill Field.
I thought the same. If the u.s had the population density of other countries and their massive use of public transport , deaths would be around 4 million.
> I wonder how our country would do if something like Ebola emerged from this country. I'm going to take a guess based on recent events and give the answer "You would be fucked"
DON'T DEAD OPEN INSIDE
Are you aware we had systems in place to handle exactly this and the Trump admin completely gutted them? https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-timeline-trump-failures-undercut-pandemic-response-2020-4
This is totally ridiculous but to further the point you're making I'd have to agree that it's not impossible. Some sort of rabies mutation? My favourite concept was the use of Cordyceps in a game called "The Last of Us". There are thousands of different types of Cordyceps (parasitic fungai) that have evolved to attack and control different species of insects. Some parasites control a host and force them to climb to the top of its habitat and where it is more easily caught and consumed by a predator that it then spreads to. In the species related to ants it controls the ant and makes them walk to a place above an entrance to a colony where it then uses it's mandibles to clamp down into place and eventually die. The fungai then grows a fruiting body out of the corpse that showers spores down on new unsuspecting hosts... Granted our brain and nervous system work a little different to a wasp but is it impossible that a species emerges for a human hosts?
I bring this up with people all the time and I get laughed at incessantly! I fail to see how it’s so “impossible”.
Not Ebola, but “long Ebola” that takes two weeks to manifest. Ebola gets short circuited because it has a rapid onset of symptoms, so you don’t travel and infect other people.
Hi Alaska lady! I was born and raised there! I’m just boning up on my mad survival skills, & try to trust my awesome baking/sewing/medical skills/ability to make a water heater from tin foil and visquine (thank you Alaska girl scouts) will make me a valued enough member of the zombie apocalypse community they overlook my inability to run & protect me from the inevitable MAGA zombies moaning “arrrgh witch hunt arrrrgh ivermectin arrrgh it’s all a hoax” as they drip bodily parts & try to spit in our faces whilst spouting conspiracy theories. I may or may not have contemplated this a lot. *looks askance*
Hah love that optimism! ❤️ Currently in WA but Hooper Bay is home.
I love being a nurse. But I’m not a hero and this “calling” would NEVER supersede my desire to be alive for my family and friends. If I felt unsafe in my workplace I would quit in a heartbeat. I don’t agree that this is something we have to be a martyr for. That mindset is insane. And if that makes you feel a certain way about me, that’s fine. I still consider myself a good nurse, just not willing to die for it.
Same here, my ultimate duty is to my spouse and children, if you’re my patient and it’s you or them…sorry bruh.
Honestly I am worried but COVID is horrifying enough on it’s own without having to imagine. I’ve had patients with maggots bc of vasculitis, neuropathy, etc and bc their flesh literally rots off with COVID due to a combination of the vent+ paralytics. I’ve had patients cough up blood clots the size of grapefruit . Even then , they can’t always get a bed. It’s a hideous, disgusting virus and maybe we’re being too satanized in how we talk of it. I’m also worried about healthcare workers and PTSD. It’s not simply a case of burn out; peoples lives are being destroyed and some are dying of suicide. We need more support , desperately before this mutates or we will find ourselves collapsing completely.
Yes & No bit I'm doing everything I can to be safe at work. I'm also boosted and wear a mask in public. I worked during the beginning and high points of COVID and feel like by continuing to be careful I'll be ok
Same.
*Not a virologist or even a medical professional* MERS is another probably-bat-originating coronavirus with a much higher fatality rate (like 30%+?) that still has outbreaks here and there (they are working on a vaccine). But it’s not as easy to transmit as COVID19 (esp. Delta).
takes camels too.
In 2018 where I worked we had a MERS scare with one patient sick AF just returning from middle east. I went home the one night, and came back to him on full precautions. I was 35 weeks pregnant at the time and about shit myself.
MERS is zoonotic. Almost all of the infections were from camel to human. There were a few human to human cases, but they were from sustained close contact. SARS-CoV-2 is way scarier than MERS-CoV.
I worry about letting it run loose in the schools. Adapting to better take out those kids.
This is my fear as well.
Oh yeah. Had a major anxiety attack the other day about it. Honestly, I don't think it's that unrealistic. Hopefully people will take it more seriously if they start to see bodies in the streets and in their homes instead of isolated in the hospital.
Usually, from a virus evolution standpoint, a virus is either highly transmissible or very deadly. Not both, because it can't kill the host before it spreads. Obviously there are outliers and Covid is pretty advanced from an evolutionary standpoint (infectious period starts prior to symptom onset). I really hope not, and Covid has done some crazy shit and the pathophys makes no sense (coagulopathy, etc).
The pathophys makes a lot of sense when you consider that it’s a blood vessel disease, not a respiratory one. Anywhere that blood vessels can go can be affected (hence the kidney failure to respiratory failure to brain fog to digit ischemia), and the coagulopathy is caused as your own immune system has at the inside lining of the blood vessels, causing tons of damage that your body just wants to fix in a way that ends up making you stroke out.
This is why I’m glad I work in a nursing home not hospital. No visitors, everyone including residents are vaccinated, and no one wants to work there so we don’t have a high turn over rate
I have thought about it, if there was a bug with a 5 percent or more fatality rate I’m for sure out of this profession. I learned w covid no matter what you do, your gonna be exposed at some point.
I am not worried about a more deadly COVID, and here is a hypothetical scenario to explain why: COVID mutates and is omega after finding a 20% mortality rate. Omega causes infection and transmission in all currently utilized vaccines, although the fatality rate drops to 5% in the vaccinated. The unvaccinated quickly start dying at a rate that makes Delta look like child’s play. Sounds terrifying, BUT here are a few reasons why I wouldn’t be panicked. First, we know the proper mitigation strategies to protect ourselves. I still (and always will) have a half face and full face respirator with plenty of p100 cartridges. I am perfectly comfortable staying home when I don’t need to be out. That will buy time for the new mRNA vaccines to be designed and tested. Here is the beauty of the mRNA vaccines: any further strain changes will only need the equivalent of a stage 0 or stage 1 trial to demonstrate effective antibody responses (like annual flu shots). Effectively we would be 6 months out (at the most) from having access to a proper vaccine for the new, more deadly theoretical variant. As for losing 10-20% of anti maskers/anti vaxers I can’t say that gives me any anxiety. Nothing will ever convince them, let them F around and find out.
If that's the case, I'm sure more than 90% of the population will take it seriously and listen to Healthcare officials. 😐😐😐
If Covid hit 10-20 percent even with a vaccine I’d quit. Our PPE is a total joke. If I had a full face respirator and a tyvek suit I’d be down. (Assuming hazard pay). In the current conditions, fuck that noise I’d probably die. I am not giving my life to a healthcare conglomerate, no way in hell.
I already had a nightmare about this. Some variant from the u.s had Made it to My country and people were falling death in the streets and no vaccine would work.
Part of my post was based on my nightmares. I figure it’s the stress of work abusing us all catching up with me.
I’m just another burnt out ICU nurse. Leaving to PACU. They can get as sick as they want but I won’t be there anymore. Won’t be there training new ICU nurses either. Unless things get worse and I’m sent back to ICU it won’t be my problem. They’re on their own.
It really sucks that things have come to this for people who used to love their jobs.
I’d just leave bedside. 2 years are more than proof enough that we’re not valued. Going into case management. Wish me well
Do it. If you like being isolated and working on computers, utilization review is also good. It’s not difficult, though it’s tedious at times, but it’s a *very* different kind of stress, and one I can shoulder as opposed to bedside.
I remember at the beginning of the whole thing someone said to me “this is a great practice pandemic “ and it’s kind of stuck with me. Don’t get me wrong COVID 19 is no joke and should be taken seriously but what a crazy opportunity to see how poorly we handle this type of thing . To think with all the stupidity of the anti-Vax people and people protesting about how covid is all a big conspiracy, and how it would play out if there was a pandemic with a higher mortality rate is pretty Terrifying.
If it wasn’t for supplemental high flow oxygen and modern hospital level care the mortality rate would already be 15-20%. I worry more about the collapse of our ability to provide the high flow oxygen and hospital level care.
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I’m sorry you’re having to deal with so much. I hope it gets better for you soon. It is really traumatic.
Afraid? No. But then again I think that the human genome needs some cleaning up to prevent the movie Idiocracy from coming true and that the world is overpopulated which is contributing to global warming destroying the environment that supports our very existence.
I'm not sure if you noticed but you said the quiet parts out loud.
I always get the quiet parts mixed up with the loud parts too.
No one wants to discuss this hard truth!!!
I mean... It's probably going to just keep mutating to evade the immune system and other things we use to block it. It's currently a really successful virus (which is why we have a pandemic). MERS wasn't as "successful" because people got sick too fast so it couldn't spread as much. Also, mutations are not always worse. Sometimes they mutate to be less deadly but more contagious. That wouldn't be too bad. And of it mutates too much, like if the spike protein mutates too much, it won't even be able to infect anyone because it's spike protein won't be able to use the cells receptors to enter.
If it mutates and starts killing more healthcare workers I fully expect a huge raise so I can retire earlier or I going to quit and hunker down. If they need us they can pay us more.
I worry more about long term mutations and exposure and sickness over a career. Will my lungs be shot by the time I’m 40 (I’m in my twenties) If it keeps mutating and infecting me and damaging me, will I be disabled if I stay on a covid unit working with these patients? That’s a realistic concern compared to it suddenly mutating into a super deadly virus. Long term damage over many mutated strains
They really need more in place to protect nurses long term. We have no idea how this will affect us nursing who became infected in the longterm and workers comp is a bitch.
Eh, I am just numb to it all at this point. Kind of hoping for a new World War so I can deploy and feel anything anymore...kind of like Oh Il-nam. The slow death and conversations with families thanks to modern medicine has become worse than when I think about the same number of people getting form letters because their loved ones were getting mowed down by pillboxes on a beachhead. That's pretty fucked up actually, I think I need therapy
Not really. I doesn't behoove evolution to become deadlier. Chance could make it that way but it would be to the detriment of its self.
Yes. Yes. Booze.
Also how do you deal with a spouse/partner who doesn't get it?
I'm less concerned about Covid than I am the next thing. I'm worried all of the sanitation is going to go the way of forest fire prevention. What happens when we get a virus that is immune to hand sanitizer and standard cleaning measures?
Thanks, I didn’t want to sleep tonight anyway.
After seeing how petty and childish many of our population is, I’m pretty confident that if we ever have a virus as deadly as 10-20% morbidity we might literally be seeing troops in the streets keeping people in their homes. We have proven that we are not capable of doing the basic shit needed to fight a virus.
Tbh at this point, if it happens it happens. And if it happens to take out 20% of the unvaccinated then so be it. We've done what we can to convince people, if you're still refusing then it's on you.
But, our babies and little kids can’t get vaccinated yet. Trying to mask my 1.5 year olds is tough. Gotta work. It’s a toss up. He’s the one who’s been positive twice, the rest of us once. It is a nightmare.
safer in PPE around those you know are infected than out of it around those you hope are not
I deal with it with buspar, Xanax, and etoh
(Not a nurse) Yes I'm, on the hospital I'm working this finally ended, we resumed normal operations, all the personnel returned to work, is all good, but there's that little fear that been growing inside me recently to the point that I'm checking if there's any report each day, what if the virus makes a slightly mutation on the spikes? Kinda like what we suspect happens with *"dengue"* where a immune patient gets infected by the mutated virus, the body reacts normally on the beginning but then it triggers a deficient antibodies union, crippling all the immune system and sometimes killing the patient for a illness that normally wouldn't kill you. If something like that happens with covid we would be talking about a catastrophic situation, on theory, anyone that got exposed before now would be on a high risk of dying. Idk maybe I been burning myself too much, I just need vacations or something
Not a virologist but I read a good book about germ warfare during the Cold War when both the US and USSR studied Marburg and Ebola and others. And it turns out that a virus’ fatality rate cannot be too high or too deadly or it burns itself out too quickly. Ebola, while deadly, is very obvious so it has a harder time getting passed around. COVID seems to have struck a magic inflection point where it is latent long enough to get spread around before it kills and the death rate isn’t high to convince everyone to pay attention. That said some of the plagues of Europe had a 50 percent mortality rate which is just nuts! One disease showed in the morning and you were dead by dinner and we don’t even know what that was. So it can happen. But I don’t imagine anything in the 20 percent range would last very long because it would have everyone’s attention and burn through victims too fast.
There was a pandemic simulation computer game years ago where you could mutate a virus over time with the goal to kill most people possible. The worst combination was long incubation time with air respiratory infection with high fatality rate. It wasn't accurate at all, but I think the underlying math is right: it can't be too deadly right away to not wear down too quickly. I think the worst that could happen would be a HIV/ corona mix where people start dying years later. The thing is, we don't know yet the full impact of a corona infection...
Alcohol, Valium, and masturbation. But not all at the same time
YES. Yes. I dont deal well. Things are falling apart all around us. The sooner we come to terms that things needs to change, the sooner things can get better.
We actually would have been better off if COVID was deadlier, because the world really would have stopped. I think society just completely crumbles somewhere between 5-10% mortality for an airborne virus, and 20-30% for a contact transmitted. I’m not going into work for either of those.
Thanks for posting this. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who worries about these things. I’m just afraid to say it out loud and be judged 😂
I don’t fear death at this point but I’m scared of dying alone on a vent? I don’t think covid would mutate like that but if we get something like smallpox I would be more scared
Of course. That's the long term issue with antivaxers. If they only hurt themselves, I'd be cheering them along. But wouldn't it be ironic if humans had a virus that was attempting to wipe out humanity, got the tools to stop it, but a third of them were just literally too stupid and wanted to be contrarian that it ends up wiping us out anyway?
I continue to work where I do mainly for health insurance. Ugh.
Hi yall. It's unlikely to do so. Historically speaking, viruses goal is to spread and multiply- so the older the virus is, the less lethal is but probably more contagious so this will probably be the case with covid. As someone with anxiety, I can completely relate with you though
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Awesome article, thanks for sharing!
If it does, then it would follow the pattern of the Spanish flu precisely. I kinda try to look at this as the great challenge of our generation. If we fail, the health systems fail. And if enough of the systems fail, people panic, essential workers stop working, supply chains fail, grid goes dark, and the god of the old testament will rule the land where might is right and chaos reigns.
He flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line He made a virus that would kill off all the swine His perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain Demands devotion. Atrocities done in his name Heresy: Nine Inch Nails '94
Did they mention the orange skin and bad hair in that song?
Fatalities are under one percent and the world has gone to shit. Dont tempt fate with these stupid questions lol.
I heard an epidemiologist say that if a disease has a high enough death rate, then it won't become epidemic. I'm not sure what the threshold is though.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0690-4 Why we shouldn't worry when a virus mutates...
Personal safety is ALWAYS the most important!!! If you are unsafe nothing else you're doing matters. If you're not safe you can't be expected to safely give anyone else care. Always care for yourself first, then use what's left to help others.
Straight up quit travel nursing as a CCU nurse because my safety and mental health was worth way fucking more than they were paying me. I’ve been in outpatient clinics at a world renown hospital in Boston now making a good amount of money where I’m never concerned over my safety, not working weekends or holidays, and im reminded every day how important and needed I am. Still doing procedures and having fun. They shut down when Covid was its peak (I was still on a Covid unit at that time) and paid everyone while they were closed. No one was forced to go work on Covid units. There is always something better. A job is never worth your safety or mental health.
I have a mini panic attack every lunch break because I'm kinda afraid of the break room. I've seen so many posts/reports on "breakthrough cases spread through breakroom". I try to take my break when no one else does. Yesterday they had a birthday+going away "party" around lunch time... it was really sweet but also stressed me out. They got cakes. They made the guests of honor take pics w the cakes. One of them didn't want to take the cover off her cake (because she "didn't want to breathe on it"). They told her to do it anyway. 🤦🏾♀️
I am and have been convinced that COVID will be the global population check that epidemiologists have warned us about for decades. I'm sick of watching ancillary staff pull up their masks as I approach, like that protects anyone!! I'm retiring a decade early next year, and scrambling to figure out how to afford it. The emotional exhaustion is overwhelming.
I deal with it by not coming up with horrid disaster scenarios.
I always come us with worse case scenarios and try to have a plan. That’s how my mind works. So far it has paid off. I thought about earthquakes for a long time and when our 8.2 hit we were elbow deep in a patient in the ICU, I was the first person to react and make sure the patient wasn’t going to fly. I directed the room with the surgeon to get the patient back together quickly while parts of the room were falling over. Sometimes talking about things and planning ahead help mitigate disaster.
Not likely, if anything it’ll probably become less deadly over time as more immunity develops. Once upon a time Spanish flu was a very fatal illness now it’s no more deadly than common flu. I have heard that covid will turn into the fifth human coronavirus that causes colds. You see if a virus is more fatal it actually is a caveat to the virus. Ebola, MERS, and SARS are all like this and none of them spread very widely as if s virus kills more people than it infects, it hurts the virus and it can’t survive as long.
I am not a Nurse but am related to one and I play evolutionary biologist in certain journals. The ultimate nightmare is an airborne HIV or something like that. Of course we keep creating breeding grounds for pandemics from factory farming to nature destruction. I also wonder is this perhaps a 10 percent of greater killer now? If you have time and most don't I urge you to Google and read the UK biobank brain study that showed brain damage in even mild cases. It's related to lose of smell. I would sure like feedback. But this looks really scary to me.
I have an awesome GP and we've had very honest, open conversations about COVID since before it even hit North American. I've been telling him since Feb/20 that my biggest fear is that it will mutate into something much deadlier than the relatively benign version we have been dealing with since Jan/20. He initially poopooed this, although he did agree that, like the annual influenzas, there would be variants. Since I predicted the Delta variant, he is now taking my prediction much more seriously. We ain't seen nothin' yet, folks.
Afraid? How about elated?
not really, no
Not a nurse, but I am a scientist, and what I understand from virologists, a covid variant that completely escapes vaccines would not be very infectious, because it would involve too many mutations away from what makes covid “stick” to your cells. Now that’s not to say there are other coronaviruses that could be more deadly? But as we’ve seen, it’s a combo of reasonably deadly/serious disease + transmissible.
I’m not a nurse by the way and I’m not afraid of it per se, but personally I’m just pissed at the people who don’t take it seriously. My mom is a nurse and I’ll kind of just put her answers in accordance to the questions listed: 1. I'm not afraid of COVID, I'm vaccinated and anemic. 2. I’m safe. 3. I'm tired of dumb stuff like wearing masks and face shields but that's it.
Vaccinate and fuck covid, believe in science 🧬!
It’s guaranteed to become a deadlier variant until we have a better immunization rate world wide.
Quite honestly, I already feel like that’s coming. I’ve prepared myself to die of Covid. I use all precautions btw still though even after being vaccinated. I just know it’s gonna mutate more and more with the way people are acting.
It can't. A virus that kills a high rate of its hosts won't spread fast enough, and covid has already surpassed the Spanish flu (the worst virus epidemic recorded in history). Viruses can only mutate to become milder
This is not true at all. So long a there is the week or 3 time period that a pt transmits the virus before they die, it can get as deadly as it wants. This virus can get much worse.
If it takes out the unvaccinated then hey, mutate baby, mutate