Mar 18, 2020
Covid19 is changing the way we interact with each other (from 6 feet away or via Zoom) the way we care for out patients (increasingly by video or telephone) and for some unfortunate few, the way we die (alone, in a hospital for days, isolated from family and friends). This is the first podcast in a series of podcasts about Covid 19. In this first podcast we talk with Lona Mody, Professor of Medicine at Michigan Medicine and John Mills, Associate Epidemiologist with Michigan Medicine. We cover terminology, epidemiology of the disease, and what we can do to protect our older and vulnerable patients. We also provide a new suggestion for a 22 second song you can sing while washing your hands in lieu of happy birthday (some of us are sick of singing happy birthday so many times a day). Our next podcast, to be released tomorrow, will be with Doug White and James Frank on the ethics of rationing ventilators. In both podcasts, we refer to this New York Times Daily podcast with Dr. Marco in Milan Italy titled, “It’s Like a War.” Every day they admit 50-70 patients with severe pneumonia due to Coronavirus infection to their 1000 bed hospital. More than half of the hospital is filled with Coronavirus infections. 460 nurses are home sick or in home quarantine due to contact with infected patients. They’re admitting their colleagues. 20 patients died from Coronavirus in one day. He talks about rationing ICU beds by age. He says, “My colleagues, both physicians and nurses, they cry everyday.” Important take away from both podcasts: Flatten. The. Curve. Now. -@AlexSmithMD