Us: Whew, tired of all these containment measures
Virus: Feeling good, feeling cute, ready for summer
— Esther Choo, MD MPH (@choo_ek) June 27, 2020
I try to keep the nightly (early morning, here on the east coast) pandemic aggregation post down to no more than 32 ‘bites’ — that’s the point where my creaky home-brewed browser starts really churning to load, which I assume also happens to many of you. Sometimes (like, almost every night this week) I could do two or three posts at that length, without feeling I’d really exhausted the new topics… but there’s only so much traumatic information we can bear!
A reminder: There is no requirement to read every story, all the comments, every new rumor or breaking headline. One reason I keep doing the nightly posts is that it helps me, personally, to shunt the pandemic-paranoia to a part of my brain that can deal with all of it. And I’m one of those pessimists who feels better when I believe I’ve explored the worst possibilities!
If (when) all this information starts to overwhelm you, walk away, do something else, prioritize your own mental health.
Scientists from @NASAEarth & counterpart acgys around the world just launched a website that tracks the effects of #COVID19 #pandemic on other planetary issues: #CO2 emissions, pollution, energy use and many counterintuitive things.https://t.co/2bVLoAADmq
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) June 25, 2020
Six months into the pandemic's sweep through the U.S., doctors tell @Reuters they feel more prepared for a second wave https://t.co/QSvc8X2pbu
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 27, 2020
… Nearly 30 doctors around the world, from New Orleans to London to Dubai, told Reuters they feel more prepared should cases surge again in the fall.
“We are well-positioned for a second wave,” Patel said. “We know so much more.”
Doctors like Patel now have:
*A clearer grasp of the disease’s side effects, like blood clotting and kidney failure
*A better understanding of how to help patients struggling to breathe
*More information on which drugs work for which kinds of patients.
They also have acquired new tools to aid in the battle, including:
*Widespread testing
*Promising new treatments like convalescent plasma, antiviral drugs and steroids
*An evolving spate of medical research and anecdotal evidence, which doctors share across institutions, and sometimes across oceans.
Despite a steady rise in COVID-19 cases, driven to some extent by wider testing, the daily death toll from the disease is falling in some countries, including the United States. Doctors say they are more confident in caring for patients than they were in the chaotic first weeks of the pandemic, when they operated on nothing but blind instinct…
Dr. Anthony Fauci told Americans that they had a 'societal responsibility' to avoid getting infected with COVID-19 because 'if you get infected, you are part — innocently or inadvertently — of propagating the dynamic process of a pandemic' pic.twitter.com/Qr9RHVkN1R
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 27, 2020