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‘Cardiac Arrests up 800 Percent’: 600+ Doctors Warn Lockdowns Doing Much More Damage Than COVID

AHA Publisher — Fri, 22 May 2020 07:00:54 +0000

Paul Strand via CBN News – A new grassroots organization of doctors is telling the nation it needs a second opinion about the way to handle this pandemic medically and mentally. During a media call, several of these doctors spoke of horrible medical results for people because of excessive panic over the coronavirus. They also told of harm done to ill or injured people because the medical world has been largely cut off to them while almost all resources have been redirected to deal exclusively with COVID-19. Dr. Simone Gold is an emergency room physician documenting these harms as she’s contacted fellow medical professionals across the country and helped form this new group A Doctor A Day. For Fear of the Virus, ‘They’re Actually Hurting Themselves’ “People are not getting their health care,” Gold shared. “We’re so worried about the fact that patients believe that they are going to get sick if they show up for medical tests. But they’re actually hurting themselves.” They’re avoiding hospitals even during emergencies. “There are all these patients out there not showing up to emergency departments,” Gold stated, saying where she works, “The volume in the emergency department is incredibly low. Maybe 60 percent of what it usually is. And this is across the nation. Everybody’s had the same experience, excluding the New York metropolitan area.” “Actually, it’s quite empty,” she reported, saying of her own hospital, “I got a letter just this last week that we are firing 50 percent of our technicians.” Layoffs have been widespread in hospitals across the country since the pandemic hit. They’re Telling Trump Real World Examples of People Hurt More than 600 of these physicians involved with A Doctor A Day have sent a letter to President Trump, asking his coronavirus task force to keep in mind the full implications of a shutdown. In that letter, they warn millions of Americans are endangered by much of the medical world being cut off from them or by them cutting themselves off from it. The letter says, “These include 150,000 Americans per month who would have had a new cancer detected through a routine screening that hasn’t happened, millions who have missed routine dental care to fix problems strongly linked to heart disease/death, and preventable cases of stroke, heart attack, and child abuse. Suicide hotline phone calls have increased 600%.” The letter includes actual cases from the doctors’ own practices: “Patient A.F. has chronic but previously stable health conditions. Her elective hip replacement was delayed, which caused her to become sedentary, resulting in a pulmonary embolism in April.” “Patient R.T. is an elderly nursing home patient, who had a small stroke in early March but was expected to make a nearly complete recovery. Since the shutdown, he has had no physical or speech therapy, and no visitors. He has lost weight, and is deteriorating rather than making progress.” Flattening the Curve Made Sense, but Not Much Has Since In the media call, Gold spoke of the goal America was originally given when everyone was told they must “flatten the curve.” That goal was making sure hospitals weren’t overwhelmed by potentially millions of people dangerously ill from the coronavirus. She agreed with that goal when it was first voiced, saying, “I always was concerned if we’d have enough ventilators and ICU staff. That was always what I knew to be the potential problem. So I was encouraged when people said that we were going to try to slow things down for that particular reason. That makes medical sense. Everything that has followed since that does not make scientific sense and is flat-out detrimental to society.” “I cannot say strongly enough that the healthcare system not only is not overwhelmed, it is underwhelmed,” Gold insisted. “I can tell you of scores of nurses who’ve been laid off and scores of technicians who’ve been laid off. And in my specialty, emergency physicians have cut their hours by 35 percent. I’ve never seen anything like this in my career. My point is: the curve has been flattened.” “The reality is that we are way past the time where being locked down makes any scientific or medical sense,” said Dr. Jeff Barke, a primary care physician in Newport Beach, California. Herd Immunity Seriously Hampered He talked up the idea of herd immunity and addressed what he sees as the danger and illogic of keeping children and young people locked up. “We are taking the healthiest folks – the youngest, the strongest: our children – and we are in effect protecting the healthiest herd from being exposed and allowing them to get herd immunity,” Barke argued. “We’re seeing over and over, especially with the statistics on children, that children are almost completely spared from the ravages of this virus.” Santa Monica pediatrician Robert Hamilton added to the point, saying, “COVID-19 has actually been a relatively benign infection for children. In one study of about 150,000 people, only 1.7 percent of them were in the age category between zero and 18 years of age.” He pointed out those few young people infected were for the most part asymptomatic, meaning the small number who were sickened were, as he put it, “a tiny minority of a tiny minority.” Pediatrician Assures Children Won’t ‘Infect All of Us & Kill Us All’ But the fact that most children will by asymptomatic has caused the fear that if schools open up again and most of the students get infected, they’ll unknowingly carry the virus to the people who could be hurt or even killed by it. Or, as Hamilton paraphrased those who worry about such a thing, “’Oh my gosh, children are the ones who are going to infect all of us and kill us all!’” Hamilton said of that, “There was a recent study following a child who turned positive in the French Alps. He was exposed to over a hundred people. None of them turned positive.” The pediatrician also cited a study done in Iceland that shows basically the same results. He suggested these studies say of infected children, “They are not what I call ‘the bubonic plague rodents’ that we sometimes look at them as.’ Children are not actually the cause of the problem…they’re not the super-spreaders that people sometimes think.” So he argues for schools opening sooner rather than later. Care Put Off Can Cause Many Medical Crises This new group A Doctor A Day is also pointing out how halting most so-called “non-essential” surgeries and treatments during the pandemic can cause multiple medical crises. Gold explained, “There are problems pushing off what’s called ‘an elective surgery.’ That’s a very gray area. Things go from ‘elective’ to ‘urgent’ rapidly.” Dr. Steven Giannotta echoed what Gold said, speaking of the crucial surgeries done by him and his associates at a hospital at the University of Southern California: surgeries for cancer, brain aneurysms, brain tumors, heart and liver transplants, and stroke care. “When the lockdown came, we dutifully reduced our capacity to approximately 30 percent of normal,” Giannotta reported. “All of those patients who were in the pipeline to have their cancer treated or their brain aneurysm treated or their spinal condition treated were all put on hold.” And that put many of those patients at increased risk. On the flip side, the care Giannotta was not willing to see cut back involves stroke victims. But many of those people just aren’t showing up to get examined and get care. “Which means people are sitting at home with potential symptoms of stroke and are, for whatever reason, refusing to access the healthcare system,” Giannotta explained. Media’s Made Being COVID Positive Feel More Dangerous Than It Is He put much of the blame for that on news coverage, saying, “We’ve allowed the media to try to stigmatize COVID positivity.” Many people are already afraid they’ll get the virus at a medical office or in a hospital, and Giannotta charged media link getting the COVID virus to death: “They’ve stigmatized now our healthcare system and people are afraid to access the healthcare system for fear of becoming COVID positive, as if that is the worst possible outcome.” But he pointed out the odds for most people dying from COVID-19 are actually statistically very low, “Whereas all of our patients with care for their brain tumors being delayed and along with our stroke victims, who are unfortunately suffering strokes because they won’t access the healthcare system, are being very severely impacted by these lockdown tactics.” They’re Hurting Their Heart for Fear of the Virus Hurting Them Speaking of heart conditions, Gold added, “Why are we not concerned patients are not showing up at their cardiologist’s when it’s well-known if you don’t go to the cardiologist’s regularly, your heart disease will worsen? Why are we not concerned about the stroke patients that are having strokes at home, not getting treated or dying?” “Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States,” cardiologist Gabe Vorobiof at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles pointed out. Speaking of those suffering from heart conditions, he reported they’re not keeping their doctors’ appointments or going to hospitals because “there are a huge number of patients that are simply terrified of what the media is putting out and they’re terrified of contracting this infection.” The results of that are deadly. “In-home cardiac arrests in the New York area are up 800 percent,” Vorobiof shared. “The majority of those cardiac arrest patients were not revived.” In other words, they died. “Ambulatory cardiology practices have seen about a 60 percent decline in patient volumes since late March. We’ve seen across-the-board reductions in patients presenting with acute myocardial infarctions (heart attacks),” Vorobiof reported, saying the same is true of those suffering strokes. “We’ve also seen reduction of patient visits for valve disease and transcatheter valve replacement. Procedures are way down.” Lockdowns & Pandemic-Panic Making Many Mental Problems Worse Gold introduced psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald, saying, “He’s had patients commit suicide because of depression and picking up drug use again.” McDonald runs a practice in West Los Angeles for children, adolescents, and other young people. He said during the lockdown, “I have had probably a 50 percent decline in patient visits due to patients being scared of coming to the office. These are children, adolescents, and young adults. They’re worried that if they get the coronavirus infection, they’ll die. And that’s what they’re hearing in the media and that’s what their parents are telling them.” He added, “And this is not isolated. I’ve had many patients call me recently in a state of panic. They don’t know what to do. They’re drinking again. They’re thinking of jumping off a bridge. They’re really suffering and there’s very little I can do. I have nowhere to send them because there are no resources available. Often they won’t even come into the office.” ‘A Pandemic of Hysteria’ “This, in my view, is a pandemic of hysteria and emotional overwhelm,” McDonald stated. “It’s not a medical pandemic. But the downstream consequences medically are very, very severe.” “There’s an emotional and social toll that this is taking on children, being in lockdown for this period of time,” said pediatrician Hamilton, backing up McDonald. “Issues of depression, suicide threats, that sense of futility, despair, fear, paranoia really, are taking ahold in our younger people, particularly older kids, junior high and high school ages.” Psychiatrist McDonald added, “I’ve had to increase my frequency and dosage of benzodiazepines, which is the valium and Xanax family of drugs, which are highly addictive, in order to treat overwhelming increases of panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, and generalized anxiety.” He added, “I hate using these drugs; I’m very conservative in my prescribing them. But I don’t have any choice because patients have no other resources. A lot of my patients have had substance abuse issues. They have nowhere to go. All of the AA meetings, 12-Step programs, outpatient and inpatient substance abuse programs — they’re done....

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New Design Will Allow Manufacturers to Mass-Produce PPE for Healthcare Workers

AHA Publisher — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 07:00:52 +0000

University of Massachusetts Amherst via News-Medical Net – In just under two weeks, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with engineers, nurses and other health care professionals, have developed a design informed by clinical feedback for protective plastic face shields as the nation combats the spread of the coronavirus. It will be made available to manufacturers to mass-produce personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers and others. A Southbridge, Mass., company, K+K Thermoforming, is now producing the first order of 80,000 shields placed by the Face Shield COVID-19 Response Team at UMass Amherst. Shields will be distributed to medical facilities and other front-line responders in the region before an expected virus peak in mid-April, says Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) director Peter Reinhart, who helped to organize a number of UMass Amherst COVID-19 Response Teams. The company says it will continue production based on demand, he adds. UMass Amherst has contributed more than $30,000 for the initial order, as well as the hundreds of volunteer hours spent designing, testing, revising and manufacturing the shields, Reinhart said, noting, “The campus response to requests for help to address COVID-19-related shortages has been extraordinary.” More than a dozen COVID-19 response teams on campus are working to help healthcare workers and others with needs, from face shields to ventilator parts to viral transport medium for virus tests. Members of the face shield and IALS teams are approved to be in a lab for the COVID-19 response, but most work is done remotely, they say, and many team members have never met. Face shield team leaders Frank Sup and Meghan Huber of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst say a variety of engineering, nursing and other researchers teamed up to meet the need. “Given the number of requests we receive on a daily basis, we know the need is dire. They’re in crisis mode, that’s why we’re working so quickly.” (Meghan Huber of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst) Sup recalls, “We knew existing supply chains were not keeping up with demand and needed to turn to alternative manufacturing options for this emergency. We also knew that package manufacturing companies had the materials on hand that might be underutilized. We found these manufacturers could scale up the production of face shields in a matter of days to meet the vast and urgent need. All they needed was the design.” How Face Shields Mitigate Risk of Contamination A face shield protects the eyes and can be worn over an N95 mask to mitigate the risk of contamination, says Huber. It is made from a single, flexible sheet of 0.010-inch plastic film designed and tested in IALS’s Advanced Digital Design and Fabrication (ADDFab) Lab, says core facility director David Follette. It folds to wrap around the forehead and fastens securely at the back with no added materials needed. This is important, Follette adds, because 3D printing a strap, for example, is slow and inefficient. “You could use all the 3D printers in the world but it’s never going to be as fast as laser-cut or die-cut plastic sheets. We decided early that our product would have to be not only effective, but cheap and fast,” he says. To supply large quantities requires high-volume manufacturing, he adds. Their final design can be made in seconds. It’s flat for easy storage, Sup notes, and its light weight makes shipping more affordable. Important Input from Nurses Testing the shield’s clinical usefulness was assisted by nurses and technicians from the College of Nursing. Associate Professor and AAAS Invention Ambassador Rachel Walker and Ph.D. student Ellen Smithline say they are impressed that the IALS designers sought user perspectives. Walker, with emergency nursing experience from other large-scale humanitarian disasters, says, “Nurses are so close to what the challenges are, you avoid a lot of pain by working with them early. Your product may be beautiful, but it may not function for the people and providers who actually have to use it.” Smithline agrees. “Nationally, it’s unusual to include nurses at the beginning. The UMass project shows what you can accomplish if you have a good collaboration.” She and Walker asked area colleagues to use and provide feedback on a series of prototypes. Based on this, Smithline, with 26 years of ER experience including with SARS and Ebola, and her ER physician husband, Dr. Howard Smithline, suggested modifications – a longer strap to adjust to head size, pony tails, glasses and safety goggles. Smithline knew fogging can be a problem, so the team investigated pre-coating with anti-fog material. Not only should PPE be comfortable, Smithline suggested, she wanted a place for the care provider’s name “because eventually everyone looks the same if you’re wearing an N95, head covering, safety goggles and gown. You may not know who you are talking to. It’s also important to have good vision to provide safe care without fear of exposure.” Walker says it was important to get input from home care agencies, hospices and others. She says, “Delivering health care in a disaster is a very haunting and horrible thing. I have deep empathy for my colleagues who are going through this right now.” To find local manufacturers, IALS’ Reinhart turned to Jim Flynn, the new assistant dean of research business development at the College of Information and Computer Sciences. He says, “When I call a company and say I’m with a UMass Amherst COVID-19 Response Team and we need help making equipment for healthcare workers, they patch me through to the president. Being from UMass Amherst gives us instant credibility.” Among many others, Huber, Sup and Follette salute technical staff Colby Norwood in the mechanical engineering department’s machine shop and Asmit Jain in the IALS ADDFab Lab for their tireless contributions. Reinhart adds, “The COVID-19 crisis has forced us to rapidly explore new ways of collaborating against a backdrop of social distancing. The effectiveness of the ‘virtual team’ model has been spectacular.” To read the original article click here.

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