Ok folks, I need to talk to you about the coronavirus for a minute. This is not a drill. Things are going to get seriously worse in a very short time and most of what I see around me is denial, denial, denial.
The situation in Italy is terrible. The Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care has published triage guidelines for determining how to allocate scarce resources like ventilators. Doctors are having to make decisions about who gets a ventilator and who doesn't. We are only 11 days, at best, behind Italy in this pandemic and nobody seems to be really grasping that this is serious. Social distancing 3-6 feet and staying home as much as possible, washing hands frequently, are the only real tools we have to slow this down so it doesn't exceed our hospital capacity. Changes in behavior need to start right now.
