Quote:
Originally Posted by Ocala Mike
Riddle me this, all you numbers guys.
The US makes up roughly 5% of the world's population.
Even though COVID-19 didn't originate here, how did we wind up with around 30% of the cases, and around 25% of the deaths?
Something doesn't smell right, and I think it's to do with the Chinese numbers which were jobbed from the getgo.
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In my opinion --
Very early on, our own CDC dropped the ball in several key areas:
• Testing. We had a shortage of test kits. So we only tested people with severe cases.
• Contact tracing. If you're not testing it's really hard to do contact tracing. If you're not doing contact tracing it's really hard to isolate those who've become infected before they can infect others - because you don't know who to isolate. (Imo, this is the primary reason our elected officials decided to isolate pretty much everybody.)
• Protective gear. They told us not to wear masks because we had a shortage of those too.
• Nursing homes. We failed to truly quarantine our most vulnerable. 'What could we have done better?' you ask.
There's a nursing home directly across the street from my office. Twice a day I see employees come off shift and go out into the community. Twice a day I see employees show up for work from wherever they were out there in the community. All day long I see employees go out into the community for lunch breaks and go back in to finish their shifts.
I'm thinking if they really wanted to protect the most vulnerable nobody new would be allowed onto the grounds without first testing clean (the five minute test would be perfect for that.)
I'm also thinking if they really wanted to protect the most vulnerable it might be a good idea to have their workers live there on site until we get past peak surge in the area. It also might be a good idea to have workers not go out into the community for lunch breaks.
That way you stand a chance of minimizing the risk of employees becoming infected somewhere out there in the community and bringing it back into the facility with them.
About three weeks ago I had a phone conversation with one of their Directors. She told me they have a staging area in the lobby where they were using use a facial thermometer to scan employees and visitors for fevers. But that's about it because that's what state health officials had told them they were required to do at the time.
Last week they put a sign on the front door saying 'No visitors. Call this number if you have any questions.'
Imo, they've been lucky so far. But lots of other facilities haven't been.
Had we done a better job very early on in key areas, I think our outbreak would be a lot less severe than where we are now.
-jp
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