'The New Normal: Overwhelmed Morgues, Crowded Hospitals, Older Americans Stuck At Home'

[appalachiablue]

"The new normal: Overwhelmed morgues, crowded hospitals, older Americans stuck at home." Dan Goldberg 5 hrs ago, Politico. July 17, 2020. - Excerpts, Edited.

The daily death count is approaching 1,000. States are ordering body bags and refrigerated trucks. Patients are lined up along the walls in overcrowded hospitals. And the coronavirus is spreading north, gaining footholds in places like Illinois and Washington state that had hoped the worst was behind them. Meanwhile the White House spent the week vacillating over whether it meant to attack its top infectious disease expert and prodding schools into reopening. Six months into the worst pandemic in modern history, a disturbing new normal has settled over the country. Younger, healthier people are circulating in public spaces. Older adults are still quarantined. Millions of essential or blue-collar workers are still doing their jobs because they can't telecommute. Minorities carry a disproportionate share of the health burden and economic pain, and morgues struggle to keep up.

“Things are the worst they’ve ever been in the U.S. and they are spiraling out of control,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University. Yet the panic and urgency that led most of the country to lock down in March and April is mostly absent this summer, giving way to a new desensitizing reality where hundreds of Americans die every day. Closings and reopenings, only to be repeated again, could become the new norm as states and cities struggle to wrestle down a virus that's outpacing the country's ability to respond.“There’s a general sense of fatigue and numbness to these numbers,” said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco. “On top of that there is this seesawing, we’re open, we’re closed, we’re open, we’re closed, and that doesn’t help with the fatigue.."

“I think the American public is accustomed to a medical system that is going to save them ... and to pills and potions that are basically going to come in and save the day,” said Charles Branas, chair of the epidemiology department at Columbia University. “We don’t have that right now and it is a challenging thing to sustain a non-pharmaceutical interventions."

The desire to break free from stay-at-home orders and shifting public health guidance helps explain why so many states are seeing record numbers of cases even as the U.S. smashes through one grim milestone after the next. Even states that suffered the most during the spring and took early steps to contain the virus are seeing signs of a resurgence.
In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards ordered bars to close again..Washington state, the site of the country's first outbreak, is reporting more infections in July than at any point during the pandemic. Officials in NY and NJ, once the epicenter of the pandemic, are concerned about the growing number of infections among young adults..
“I expect the death toll will continue to rise,” said Justin Lessler at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
Natalie Dean at the University of FL said, “We don't understand the long-term impacts,” she said. “Breathing difficulties or other neurological symptoms. And those people can infect others. Old people still need to go to the grocery store.”

There is some cause for optimism. Doctors are far better at treating the virus than they were in the spring and the country, as a whole, is doing a better job at protecting older and other vulnerable populations. Businesses like Walmart and Kroger this week mandated masks in their stores- and even conservative governors in AL, AK, and TX are mandating mask use and reimposing restrictions on businesses in an effort to flatten the curve. “The public health community isn’t ready to give up and say this is the new normal,” said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

One thing that is apparent is the pandemic has left America more bifurcated...

Full Article,
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-new-normal-overwhelmed-morgues-crowded-hospitals-older-americans-stuck-at-home/ar-BB16SMS0

[captain queeg]

1. Staying home is the norm for most everyone I know

I get out very little. It’s better than it was in the beginning, think we have a little better knowledge of what to worry about and more people are being careful, at least around here. I got stocked up with masks and hand sanitizer and looks like most everything is available in stores now.

[appalachiablue]

2. That's smart and similar to what people I know do, us too

to large extent. The way it has to be now and possibly for many months.

A real scary crisis, esp. for the many people who have to go out to work in order to survive and thus risk infection. Deeply serious times we're in now.

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

By the end of the month, the country will likely have recorded 4 million infections and nearly 150,000 deaths. Black and Hispanic Americans are hospitalized at five times and four times the rate of white one, respectively, according to the CDC. People of color are also more likely to have jobs that don’t allow them to work from home and where social distancing is a challenge. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanic people considered at high risk for coronavirus live with at least one person who is unable to work from home, compared to 47 percent of white Americans, according to a recent study.

“The unequal toll on people of color has been devastating and tragic,” said John Auerbach, president and CEO of the Trust for America’s Health. "It’s related to overcrowded, segregated housing and limited job opportunities.”

Bibbins-Domingo said even when infections were dropping around San Francisco the virus was circulating widely in the Hispanic population because they were still going to work in disproportionate numbers.

Politicians, including some Republicans, and public health experts have criticized the White House’s laissez-faire response, arguing that the federal government blew its chance to spend the spring preparing, building up the nation’s public health infrastructure and readying its health workforce for the resurgence nearly everyone expected.

[appalachiablue]

4. The amount of stress and pain put on people of color,

the main workforce during this pandemic, and in general is so unjust. But in line with our history of racism and dysfunction which I hope can change. It's certainly not looking good these days, better times ahead.