Our greatest protest for healthcare

Alberta hit 919 cases today. We don’t know our hospitalizations or ICU admissions currently; our system is experiencing technical difficulties at an inconvenient time. (My experience with technical difficulties is that’s ALWAYS when they hit.)

We had five additional deaths reported…

 These deaths are a tragedy, no matter their age, no matter the circumstance. If you’ve lost someone, you know, it’s a tragedy for these five families.

Death is the most tragic part of this illness.

We know we will add deaths to our COVID total if this continues. We need to know we may have additional deaths from other causes too, unless we get this under control.   

Let’s talk about our health system.  

Anyone keeping track of your province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health (or their equivalent elsewhere) has heard about “overwhelming the health system.”

We saw it in Italy with military trucks hauling away bodies, with Italian doctors and nurses having to choose who received care (and who did not) based on survival probability. Many didn’t “make the list.” These weren’t all COVID patients. Patients with other situations were hitting those hospitals at the same time. Triage, I imagine, was a nightmare.

We saw it again in New York. Bodies were stored in refrigerated trucks when the morgue and funeral homes ran out of room for the bodies.

Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters…in a reefer van

And here we are. We are talking about an “overwhelming” of the system here in my home province. The metropolitan city north of me is feeling the strain. As of a couple of days ago,  30 percent of non-urgent and elective surgeries in Edmonton have been postponed for the foreseeable future to ensure hospitals have the capacity to withstand any outbreaks.

Calgary, just 25 minutes from my town, is bracing itself. ICU departments are holding emergency meetings because (typical of 2020) ICU departments are already experiencing higher than normal levels of NON-COVID ICU admissions…and the COVID wave is headed their way. Of the 919 cases today, some proportion will hit the Emergency Department; will go to acute care, others to ICU. Again, our data has not been updated for current numbers, but this is what I have.

The age breakdown for total COVID ICU admissions we have to this point is:

1 – 4 years – 1 admission

10 – 19 years– 4 admissions

20 – 29 years – 8 admissions

30 – 39 years – 11 admissions

40 – 49 years – 22 admissions

50 – 59 years – 41 admissions

60 – 69 years 56 admissions

70 – 79 years – 49 admissions

80 + years – 21 admissions

(Looks like my husband’s age group is winning the ICU lottery…)

The last current data we have is 171 COVID patients in hospital including 33 in ICU. 9 hospitals have outbreaks.

Resources for ICU are expensive, but it doesn’t stop there for those that recover, especially older patients.

Dr. Darren Markland, an ICU doc in Edmonton, took to Twitter to share some information on COVID ICU admissions for older patients. (shared with permission from @drdagly) We know mortality is high for this demographic, Dr. Markland shared that should someone over 80 need ICU, their mortality pushes 80%.

“Consequently, they rarely are admitted to ICU. This means:

1. ICU occupancy lags hospital admission rates significantly and is an insensitive metric for healthcare capacity and strain.
2. These are preventable deaths that take a significant number of quality years with them. “

Dr. Markland also points to the weeks of treatment required for these sickest patients.

He talks additionally about those that survive the ICU and how they continue to need augmented support in the hospital for an extended duration. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and nutritional support. If not cared for, he says they can end up back in this rapidly filling ICU.

Finally, Dr. Markland tells us,

“This situation is preventable. Our hospitalization numbers are a serious warning that mandatory measures are needed now. But while we wait for direction. Please do not go to work if you are sick. No more in-person parties until there is a vaccine. Wear your mask around people.”

He ends with…

In the middle of this, people in healthcare are stressed by a government that has chosen this particular time to address health care costs. I’m a fiscal conservative; I get it. The old Alberta Advantage seems to be a page in history. However, our health minister appears to be hesitant to collaborate with doctors for cost savings, refused arbitration and ended their contract early. He’s announcing layoffs of the very people specifically trained to clean to COVID protocols (while hiring private folks without that training). It looks like he’s eliminated overtime at a time when health professionals need to use it the most, needing to cover shifts for those self-isolating, caring for kids who are isolating…becoming ill.

Before the second wave of COVID19 completely hits our health system, we have a group of fragile people on the front line.  

They are already tired.

Our government has put the burden on us to try to turn this tide. Many people posit that the government should be doing more. It’s a hard call to make. There’s no question the spring shut down negatively affected business owners across the province; many closed.  Most restaurants have done a stellar job of adopting COVID protocols to keep their customers safe, and very few infections have come from those types of gatherings. Is it fair then to shut down a restaurant owner, many who operate on the thinnest of margins at the best of times? Maybe not. I don’t have the answer.

Personal responsibility, however, has led us to 919 cases in one day. We don’t appear to be a very responsible lot. Why? Again, it probably relates in a big way that it’s mostly “old people” who die. Here’s where I say,

If you can’t get behind saving the lives of the aged, could you get behind saving the lives of the general public who may suffer harm from an overwhelmed system?

Can I appeal to you to “protest” for our health care workers by protecting them from this onslaught? Is wearing a mask, sticking to your own household, sanitizing etc. harder than walking a picket line? Maybe not.

 Is it more meaningful at this moment in time than honking your horn as you go by or clapping for them as they leave the hospital?

I daresay, your actions to bend the curve on this thing will be the single most loving and impactful thing you do for our health care workers.

I know. I love a couple and hold the rest in my heart.