Covid-19 in OKC (coronavirus)

[Bunty]

OU & OSU are already reporting dozens of new cases.

I'm sure those numbers will only go up.

On Friday morning, 8/27, Stillwater Hospital is full with 6 patients in the ER waiting for beds to become available. It was worse earlier this week with 9. 91.3 % of COVID patients there are unvaccinated.

[Roger S]

91.3 % of COVID patients are unvaccinated.

How many of them are parasite free after self dosing Ivermectin? I know that stuff has to be easy to find around Stillwater.

[Bunty]

How many of them are parasite free after self dosing Ivermectin? I know that stuff has to be easy to find around Stillwater.

I don't know. I wonder if hospitals ask new covid patients what drugs they were taking, if any, before that are admitted. I would guess they do.

[Roger S]

I don't know. I wonder if hospitals ask new covid patients what drugs they were taking, if any, before that are admitted. I would guess they do.

Yep. You would be correct with that guess.

[Jersey Boss]

Why?

It gives me a better understanding of the severity of the hospitalizations.
Tonight on the news 4 metro hospitals including Baptist and Mercy have no ICI beds.

[Ward]

Is Deaconess Hospital being utiilized? And if so, to what extent?

Since Baptist Integris bought Deaconess, I see a few vehicles, certainly not many, there.

[d-usa]

Sounds like OKC metro area is out of ECMO circuits.

[corwin1968]

I knew about the 13 year old OKCPS student passing, but had not heard an OKCPS teacher had also passed away.

I suspect we are heading toward school closures again. The "Covid positive person(s)" e-mails are pretty much a daily thing now.

We drove by Crest in Edmond and I counted 11 cars in line for Covid testing. My wife pointed out that I only counted the cars between the far West entrance and the Covid 19 trailer. She said there were also cars waiting between the East and West entrances that I didn't see.

[king183]

Is Deaconess Hospital being utiilized? And if so, to what extent?

Since Baptist Integris bought Deaconess, I see a few vehicles, certainly not many, there.

No, and I would not expect them to use it.

[mkjeeves]

Even if they wanted to open it up they probably couldn’t staff it.

[d-usa]

I think there are still many people who don’t realize how bad the nursing shortage was in February 2020, and how much worse it has gotten since then. Nurses are quitting at an unprecedented rate and students are leaving nursing left and right. I know three people who fought hard to get into nursing school over the past few years who have now changed to a different major, with one changing to a non-healthcare major. And I know 5 nurses who have left the field over the past year, not counting myself.

[soonerguru]

Is Deaconess Hospital being utiilized? And if so, to what extent?

Since Baptist Integris bought Deaconess, I see a few vehicles, certainly not many, there.

They don't have the staff to run another ICU in another hospital. Some nurses are walking off the job, exhausted. They are having to handle much more than what they did in the past. The human resources are seriously strained.

[no1cub17]

They don't have the staff to run another ICU in another hospital. Some nurses are walking off the job, exhausted. They are having to handle much more than what they did in the past. The human resources are seriously strained.

Either walking off or taking travel nursing jobs which pay 4-5x their usual salary. I don't blame nurses one bit for getting out. It's just become unbearable for them. The ones that aren't anti-vaxx anyway.

[catch22]

Well this is depressing:

CNN reporter just quoted a doctor as referring to many COVID patients as “the talking dead”: they have lost so much lung function that they will die as soon as their life support is removed, but they are awake and able to discuss with their doctors.

I do not believe you want to be in the position that you have to make the choice on when to pull your own plug.

https://twitter.com/drskyskull/statu...396554242?s=21

[Plutonic Panda]

Are iron lungs going to come back?

[Bill Robertson]

Very depressing.
I watched my dad spend the last 32 years of his life as a functioning brain inside a non-functioning body. It was hell for him. And not so hot for any of us. So for me having the plug pulled by my choice would come sooner rather than later.

[dankrutka]

Here's the story of a veteran in Texas yesterday who died for a treatable procedure because no hospitals had an available ICU bed. https://twitter.com/DavidBegnaud/sta...989523971?s=20

[Plutonic Panda]

^^^ that is infuriating. Almost makes me wish they’d just kick someone out who was eligible to get the vaccine but refused to make room for him.

In some better news: https://twitter.com/davidfholt/statu...441148417?s=21

[d-usa]

Are iron lungs going to come back?

Not really a helpful option here. Iron lungs fix a mechanical issue (muscle paralysis or weakness) and create the pressure differential needed for the lungs to expand and contract inside the chest which then results in air moving in and out of the lungs. The iron lung decreases pressure inside the machine, which causes the chest wall to expand. When the chest wall expands it decreases the pressure inside the chest itself, which causes the lungs to expand. When the lungs expand, it creates low pressure inside the lungs, which causes air to move into the lungs where O2 and CO2 is exchanged with the blood. It’s a fairly “basic” design, and clamshell type external respirators are still used at times to assist people.

Ventilators also work with pressure of course, but instead of manipulating the external pressure to move air in and out of the lungs it directly manipulated the pressure inside the lungs. Instead of air getting sucked into the lungs, it is pumped into the lungs. Ventilators give much more control over all the different aspects of respiration: volume of air being moved, pressure of the air entering the lungs, pressure remaining during exhalation to keep the lungs open or to push fluids out of the lungs. They can also control the exact mixture of air entering the lungs, the temperature, the humidity, etc. From the basic CPAP people have on their night stand to the complex machines at hospitals, there are a ton of options for ventilators out there. But in the end, the ventilators have the same limitations that the iron lungs have: they can get air in and out of the lungs, but the lungs themselves have to do the work of gas exchange to get oxygen in, and CO2 out.

The issue with people at these stages of COVID is that the lungs are so damaged, and the lung tissue itself is so damaged, that the gas exchange just doesn’t happen. You can pump all the pure oxygen you want into those lungs, but it will never cross through those tissues and get into the blood. And none of the CO2 is ever going to cross through those tissues and leave the body. Ventilators, iron lungs, they all just inflate and deflate two useless bags of tissue at that point.

That’s where ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, artificial lungs) comes in. Instead of trying to get air into your lungs to get oxygen into your blood, it bypasses your lungs and heart and takes the blood out of your body, runs it through the machine to take CO2 out and put O2 in, and then pump it back into and through your body. And then they just wait and hope that at some point your lungs will heal enough that they can put you back on a regular vent and maybe send you back home on oxygen for the rest of your life. Or they wait until a lung transplant becomes available. But while that machine is running, while it is your heart and lungs, you are alive and could sit there and talk with your family and play games, watch TV, etc, for as long as you’re connected to the machine and it keeps on working.

Instead of being brain dead, with a machine keeping you alive, you are basically “lung dead”, with a machine keeping you alive. It’s still quite some steps away, but it does get us a step closer to the ethical question of “if a body is so damaged that it can’t survive, but you could cut off the head and connect it to this machine, is it ethical to keep your head and brain alive that way”.

[d-usa]

That became a wall of text didn’t it…

[Plutonic Panda]

Thanks for the explanation. It will be interesting to see what becomes of this. I wonder if anyone alive knowing they are not going to make it would volunteer themselves for medical research. Not sure it’d ever be accepted by society as being ethical even if consent it given.

[Plutonic Panda]

https://twitter.com/kassiemcclung/st...039711240?s=21

[dankrutka]

https://twitter.com/kassiemcclung/st...039711240?s=21

Powerful and shows a perspective of the COVID patient in the hospital you don’t always see.

As a side note, would folks mind explaining what you’re posting when you drop a link. I prefer not to click on links without any context.

[Plutonic Panda]

Powerful and shows a perspective of the COVID patient in the hospital you don’t always see.

As a side note, would folks mind explaining what you’re posting when you drop a link. I prefer not to click on links without any context.

I usually do explain or try to I was just being lazy there and was running around all day. Sorry for the lack of description

[dankrutka]

I usually do explain or try to I was just being lazy there and was running around all day. Sorry for the lack of description

You’re good. It’s happened a lot lately. I just happened to comment on your post.