I read a very scary description yesterday from a New Orleans ER doc about COVID19- how the cases unfold medically, what happens logicistically to the hospital involved. It’s a nasty viscous nightmare virus. If you’ve ever managed a critically ill patient, you’ve been there when the wheels come off the bus for a patient and you’re scrambling to deal with muiltorgan failure, balancing not giving too much X which you need a lot of for organ system A but too much of will be a disaster for organ system B. And multiplying that by 50 cases in your hospital all at the same time, and all of whose wheels come off in a slightly different way.
What I read really struck a chord with me, totally rang true, and it was terrifying.
I left me dumbfounded (as I have frequently been in this thing) by the minimizers and deniers. I thought to myself, “they’ll see for themselves soon enough!”
But will they? Maybe not. Maybe if you doubt all information in the public sphere (as many do), you just ignore the numbers. You only are impacted by what you know personally. And most people are never going to see what happens inside the hospitals. Most people have never seen a human death of any kind, let alone one in a critically ill patient in whom everything fails simultaneously. Most people have a TV understanding of illness but TV would never portray the reality of it, because no one would watch that show.
Still struggling obviously with my cycling friends. One of whom just today commented on FB that the coronavirus response is a terrible joke being played upon the American people.
Im also thinking of late about the nature of friendship. In almost all other aspects of my life, I develop a friendship with someone out of a high degree of commonality. But in cycling, it’s often just starts as a logistical thing. Then you have fun riding with that person and become “friends”. But without that commonality so something like this comes up and you’re like WTF? But even then, I don’t care what your habits are, or your worldview generally, because typically they don’t affect anyone else. Now though I have disgust for deniers and minimizers because of the impact their actions on others. So it’s a struggle because you know you aren’t supposed to “judge” people, but I can’t unknow what I know. Bottom line when this is over, the circle of people I consider friends is gonna wind up significantly smaller.