Heliopolis: Shreveporters need to know just how bad COVID-19 really is
When patients are not around, we are in the office, looking at charts, and we are shrugging our shoulders wondering why people won’t stay home.
About 30% of people sick with coronavirus that need hospitalization will end up on a ventilator. Of the people who end up on a ventilator, 50-80% will never go home. That’s what’s happening. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how healthy you are. It can happen to anyone. This is real life.
I talked to another doctor who said that most of his patients who are testing positive for COVID-19 are between the ages of 25 and 45. They are healthy people who are going about their lives and have been going about their lives in the weeks before they tested positive. That means they’re going grocery shopping. They’re going to Home Depot. They’re going to Academy. They’re going to all the places you are going and you think are safe. When you’re going on a quick run to the grocery store or a restaurant to pick something up… that’s where it is right now.
The best way to survive this pandemic is not to get the virus. The best way not to get the virus is to stay home. This is not the time for a quarantine crawfish boil or quarantine playdates or quarantine parties. I understand that you need things to do, but if you could come to the hospital, you would see that it’s just not worth it to start a flower garden. If you do have to go out, as soon as you get home, you need to be stripping down, washing your hands, taking a shower, and then wiping down everything you just came home with.