Since this is a long article, I will keep my comments brief. But before I comment, here are comments from Maggie, our community surgeon currently working at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA. If you don’t read my comments or the article, please at least understand what she has to say.
People seem to finally be getting social distancing her in LA but this article, in particular the last couple of paragraphs, is on point.
-Maggie Diller M.D.
“A recent analysis from the University of Pennsylvania estimated that even if social-distancing measures can reduce infection rates by 95 percent, 960,000 Americans will still need intensive care. There are only about 180,000 ventilators in the U.S. and, more pertinently, only enough respiratory therapists and critical-care staff to safely look after 100,000 ventilated patients. Abandoning social distancing would be foolish. Abandoning it now, when tests and protective equipment are still scarce, would be catastrophic.”
There is a lot in the article, but one of the things that stood out to me is how interconnected modern life is. A disease that seems to be a problem in a distant part of China at the beginning of the year becomes everyone’s problem in the spring. Then that same disease takes out a part of the world where most medical face masks are mass-produced, and we run into a world-wide shortage.
Things have always been interconnected, but it seems technology is somehow making that interconnectedness more real in both good and bad ways. While there may have been a time when humans could entertain the illusion of tribalism or nationalism, we need to see how interconnected we are for our own best interest and survival. On a larger scale, we should realize we are interconnected with the web of all life on this planet.
-Douglas Johnson E-RYT 500, YACEP
