In early March 2020 I began to write posts about Covid 19. There were few places that people could get good information that addressed the big picture and made it possible to understand what was happening. It seemed like I should write some things that made sense of it all. I wanted to write about what I knew, or thought I knew was true, since there was so much misinformation circulating. So, during the second half of March, I wrote nine blog posts. What did I say and was it true? In my very first post I talked about how everything would change . How we would burn less carbon, we would learn how not to travel for work, how we would learn not to transmit other viruses, like influenza. That was all true . The demand for gasoline was so low that oil prices dropped to a fraction of the cost of production. Planes didn't fly much. We haven't had a flu season to speak about due to infection control measures. I said we should have massively expanded testing because it would allow p
Post Covid-19 Syndrome: dying of Covid is terrible, but some people get sick and just don't get well
In my present job in a low cost health clinic I don't see much acute Covid. Patients in the infectious stage of the coronavirus are dangerous to everyone they breathe on and potentially infectious virus particles can survive on surfaces in clinic, putting staff and other patients at risk. We see most patients who are still infectious in their cars or we arrange video or telephone based visits. If they are very sick, they need to go to the hospital. Sometimes I feel guilty that I am not taking care of these very sick patients, but that's not my role right now. The people I do end up seeing are patients who have had Covid, should have recovered, but are still sick. There are many of these people. These are young people, in their 20's maybe, who got sick, tested positive, took 2 weeks off of work, but then can't function normally when they try to go back. They are older people, often with other chronic diseases, who were doing fine but now can't take care of their hou