This has been driving me crazy the last few weeks.....

[Jeff Body]

Sorry another Covid question.

[Scott Winners]

You know, I really try to avoid these discussions, but I am in before the thread gets locked, so here goes.

I have been a Registered Nurse for 25 years. As a nursing student, I used to tutor microbiology, 25+ years ago. I am currently working in home health (like a district nurse in the UK), so I go to see my patients in their homes where they all have "pre-existing conditions."

The first thing to understand is within the field of microbiology "novel" means we haven't seen this one before. COVID 19 is a novel virus. It is in the corona virus family, and we have known about those for a while, but we haven't seen this exact one before.

Do you remember the early 1980s when homosexuals and hemophiliacs were dying and no one really knew for sure why? We are one step beyond this in the COVID pandemic because we have identified the virus; but what we know now, compared to what we will know 40 years from now is - well - not very much.

Since March I have been averaging something like 55 hours a week. Between June 14, 2020 and Aug 28, 2020 I had four days off. Four.

Here is what I have been doing since March 2020:

The number of my patients on my census who have tested covid + since this thing hit is zero. I did have one admission, a COVID "long hauler" that I picked up after his inpatient admission while he was still presumed contagious and quarantined. So he was already covid + when I picked him up, the rest of my guys I have been able to keep out of trouble, and I got that one out of the woods.

I have kept up with my emails from the hospital I work for.

I have kept up with regular email updates from my home state's department of health.

I have kept up with news headlines from centrist, leftist and righty type news outlets. I have read many news articles, only reading to conclusion the ones that were clearly scientific all the way through, with minimal allowance for most news reporters not being trained microbiologists.

The CDC, historically, has been a global beacon of medical fact based peer reviewed knowledge. I don't remember when it was exactly, but sometime in August 2020 I personally concluded the CDC was no longer providing only solid science based reccomendations.

I wash my hands before and after every patient visit. I wear an N95 mask and safety glasses for all patient contact. I wear a cloth mask when in public and not alone in my vehicle.

I see my immunocompromised patients in the morning, my patients with infections in the afternoons, and my suspected/possible covid patients last.

My bubble is me, my wife and our cat. I have not been to church since March. When my wife goes to church (she is on the A/V team) she wears an N95 mask and social distances.

I used to go to the grocery store on my way home from work pretty much three or four times a week. Now we do a big shop once per month with one other trip two weeks later.

I usually eat my lunch in the parking lot with the tail gate of my truck serving as my picnic table.

When my wife and I get home from being in public we each doff all of our clothing, shower in the downstairs bathroom and then go upstairs to our "clean" area - where there is another bathroom.


Some other pertinent facts:

Soap and water kills COVID19, but you can't wash out your lungs or eyes with soap and water.

I spent 16 years as the stretcher side nurse moving tubing aroung on the bronchoscope when collecting sputum samples from possible TB patients who were unable to cough up a sputum sample for the lab. I have worn a few N95 masks in my time, and I don't have TB.

I recall two reports in mainstream media of individuals having been infected with COVID 19 twice that I found credible. The first was in China, the second in Europe.


Some opinions:

The efficacy of cloth masks in preventing or reducing COVID 19 transmission will not be firmly established for at least two more years. My opinion is the use of a cloth mask by me does little to protect me from COVID, but it will _probably_ in the future be proven that my wearing a mask today does protect you somewhat today. In the meantime, the preponderance of actual extant peer reviewed medical literature suggests cloth masks (two layer) can't hurt and might help. Bleating about civil rights and freedom is similar to fingernails on a chalkboard to those of who wear them for hours at a time through decades long careers. Please find something meaningful to whine about- like the CDC losing its status as a bastion of good science.

I am really glad to have purchased a pair of safety prescription glasses with the Z87++ whatever certification. They will be handy in the woodshop someday when I have free time again.

We (the medical we) (in my opinion) haven't found all the antibodies made by survivors that we need to know about yet, to eventually come up with an effective long term vaccine. The antibodies we have identified seem to fade away within a couple months, but as far as I know I am still immunue to smallpox from a vaccine I got in the 1960s. Yes, small pox is bacterial and covid is viral, but I am not excited about getting a covid vaccine anytime soon. As was previously mentioned in this thread, like the common cold there may never be an effective long term vaccine for COVID 19.

Some of my guys are getting complacent about masking. I have done my best to educate all of them, but they are just sick and tired of masking and want to go be with their friends. I will be sad to lose them, but I have done my best and will be able to move on with eyes front.

What I have been doing, using small words:
Practice social distancing.
Teach my people to practice social distancing.
Wash my hands.
Stay away from people who aren't in my bubble and aren't wearing masks.
Limit trips to places where people don't wear masks correctly.
Support local restaraunts by buying food in the store but getting the food to go.

Good luck and best wishes.