Jelze Bunnycat wrote:First-Aid wrote:Note from healthcare providers: if you have tested positive, please do NOT make an appointment with your provider and ask "why am I feeling sick?" And expect them to make it magically go away. We are looking at you wondering just how you managed to be the fastest sperm and thinking your mom should have swallowed.
Harsh
Don't blame you tho.
Yeah, it's burning out a lot of providers. The burnout though is being aggravated by the shutdowns. The infinite wisdom of the government in shutting down screenings and clinics is bearing fruit here. Two big issues specific to health care providers...first, the pandemic has sped up retirements of providers and nurses. Second, the shutdowns extended to clinical rotations and residencies for up-and-coming providers, delaying graduation of some 200,000 health care professionals. This may be the single stupidest decision ever made. WHy? Because those providers in school help to take the load off of currrent professionals. They would have made a huge difference in the workload. But they shut them down. Honestly, I'd like to find the people who made that decision and punch them in the gonads with spiked knuckles.
As an FYI, we are starting to see the consequences of the shutdowns now as well. Two recent studies were released regarding the consequences of the shutdowns. First, children born during the pandemic are experiencing developmental and social delays, especially in the 6-12 month old age group, related to the inability to interact with other children and lack of exposure to facial expressions due to masks. Second, mortality for Alzheimer's Disease patients increased by as much as 40% because of "the alteration in health care delivery and inability to gain access to providers, directly related to shutdowns." In the US, that's approximately 30-40,000 additional deaths per year in the US for a single directly cause related to the shutdowns. That's 8-10% of the total of number of deaths caused by Covid to date. If the numbers are similar for other causes of death (COPD, CHF, suicides/trauma, cancers, etc), the total number of deaths related to the shutdowns could be three to five times the total number of deaths from Covid itself...approximately 3-5 million preventable deaths in total over a two year period. Further research is pending, but it is not promising. Cancer in particular is seeing a massive increase in preventable mortality due to discontinuation of normal screenings, inability to access providers, and people simply avoiding going to providers out of fear.