@michele-b, I am so sorry. You have written such a harrowing account, and it shows so clearly how the increased burden of anxiety and limited resources are buffeting mothers-to-be, their families, and healthcare professionals. You must have been beside yourselves. I hope that your family member, baby and family are recovering and doing well.
A family member gave birth in late January, and looking back we all feel that sigh of relief that hospitals were still operating normally then and things went smoothly. Anecdotally, these exact thoughts (about the pandemic) crossed her mind briefly, and I wonder what obstetricians and midwives were feeling and thinking at that time too. Did it factor into any decision making, deliberately or subconsciously? I have not heard of such surges but perhaps these exact studies are being done. Some have suggested that we should expect pandemics more frequently in the future, in part due to climate change. It would therefore be so important to know.
Thank you for your kind words, @michele-b!
@coyote I remember the day they told us to wear masks! I was so pissed! I was angry because there were not enough masks for the hospital workers much less us. Trump blew this whole thing so badly! Obama saved us from Ebola, by sending a team into Africa! We had a Pandemic Team with supplies. It’s just so hard to believe we have allowed this man to wreck us so badly! It’s so hard to believe that people can’t cooperate on healthcare issues. Depending on how they adjust to our new reality, will determine our future. I don’t think they have a choice. I’m old enough to remember children in my neighborhood that came down with polio. Jonas Salk gave us the polio vaccine. Can you even imagine a company or person giving a gift like that today? That just shows you the selfish mindset of people today. Perhaps that is the lesson of Covid-19.
On the one hand I'm thankful children will be released from ICE detention, on the other hand, I am frightened for them. Human trafficking is a big problem. May these children be well cared for and protected. May family members and caring individuals get to them first.
So after typing the above paragraph I looked it up, and found this CNN article with the following:
Regardless, I believe we need to pray and petition to ensure every child ends up in a good place and is not hurt or taken advantage of.
Can anyone tell me the actual cause of this new shortage?
I am now seeing these signs or similar appear in grocery stores and at least one drive thru window. Is it germ related? Or something else. Seems really odd. Why not a bill shortage too then?
Attention Customers
The U.S. is currently experiencing a coin shortage.
Please use correct change or other form of tender if possible.
We apologize for any the inconvenience this may cause.
@lovendures I can't explain it, unfortunately, but I saw something about this on Twitter earlier this evening, and I am still puzzled by it. It makes no sense to me that this is even an issue, much less that it would would be national news. The sudden emergence of this as a problem and the relatively high profile coverage seems a bit fishy to me.
I know. One of the things I have read is that stores have been closed so coins haven't been circulating and once things open back up, things will circulate better. That makes no sense. NO business sits on coins or any money. Even if banks are closed, it wasn't months worth of coins sitting in a store somewhere. A few days at most.
Mints had to shut down temporarily and are playing catch-up:
https://krcgtv.com/news/local/federal-reserve-warns-of-temporary-coin-shortage
Hmm. That still doesn't make sense to me though I am not fully aware of how these things work. If money hasn't been changing hands much for months, what happened to the old coins? Would a partial shutdown create NO coins for businesses when many haven't even been opened for 2 months or so? Stores don't seem to really have any on hand. But again, I don't really understand this system.
@grace Okay, the shutdown sort of makes sense, but coins last a long time, and as @lovendures says, if money isn't changing hands as much lately, where would the coins go? Sure, there's some attrition due to age, I can't imagine it would cause a shortage. *shrug* I'm sure it's not a big conspiracy thing, but it is curious.
*Lots of stories of Arizona healthcare workers breaking down crying at work, calling out sick therefore being very short staffed for the next shift, and actually getting sick with COVID. EVERYONE is working overtime. Healthcare workers are getting slammed. My heart goes out to all of them*
I read all of the statistics you shared and its like shaking my version of reality even as realistic as i thought I was being to my core.
I want to throw up with all of their fearful gut wrenching and despair filled energies.
No wonder you needed a break and an escape from this level of intensity.
Bless you for holding your faith. You have touched some people here who once said they didn't know if they could believe in a God by any or all other names.
Perhaps this is how it is working. That people need to be so full of fear for themselves and their loved ones before they are willing to change their hearts and change their minds and in panic stricken place of feeling overwhelmed wanting to find something deeper to flow into and hold onto.
Whereas its always been easy for me i know its not the same for so many. Much love to you and yours with the assurance of no matter what happens we can all do this, be what and who we need to be, and do for our families and our world and still have peace of mind beyond our fears and losses.
It's not easy looking at the reality of the numbers and knowing it's only just begun.
Now there's already word of a new form of swine flu in China. Its barely on the radar but it will or could intensify the true second wave as we move into autumn without respite for all those already exhausted.
Flu virus with 'pandemic potential' found in China - BBC News
While it is not an immediate problem, they say, it has "all the hallmarks" of being highly adapted to infect humans and needs close monitoring.
As it's new, people could have little or no immunity to the virus.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53218704
My heart goes out to all of them but also to all of us who will experience much in the times ahead.
RE: Reported coin shortage
"Federal Reserve warns of temporary coin shortage | KRCG
"Is it a huge issue? No, it's not. This isn't like the 'new toilet paper issue,'"
Westhues said. "There are different payment mechanisms available, which minimizes the reliance on coin."
Banks, stores, and other institutions get their coin primarily from two sources: the Fed and from customer exchanges.
While the Reserve's mints play catch-up, Westhues said people using the coin they have laying around the house, in their pockets or in their car can help those institutions keep their coin levels more stable.
http://krcgtv.com/news/local/federal-reserve-warns-of-temporary-coin-shortage
I think it's just stores' way of saying not to use cash, or a way to say - we'd rather just round up.
There are literally buildings full of coins around the country, every Reserve Bank has them.
There has been a movement over the last decade or so to eliminate coins altogether, as they really are a holdout from the past. If you think about it, there's really no reason for them anymore, or at least certainly not for things under 25 cents/a quarter. All of the prices that end with .99 are just for marketing, to make things look cheaper, and that's the only reason we still make pennies in this country.
I honestly don't care either way. In this house we rarely use cash, but when we do the change goes in a jar, which I was rolling up on a monthly basis to the tune of $50 each time, which I spent 20 years putting in my daughter's bank account. With the pandemic, no cash, so less work for me right now!
P.S. - I missed a post - where are you traveling? And I wish you safety and protection on the journey in any case!
@lovendures In my opinion they should have phased out the minting of pennies decades ago and required merchants to price all of their items in multiples of 5 cents. A major problem is the fact that it costs more than 1 cent to mint a penny. This has resulted in some people melting down pennies and selling the copper it contains.
One thing I cannot support is a "cashless" society where people pay for everything with credit or debit cards. I am very suspicious of the motives and especially the unbridled greed of the very wealthy and privileged. I worry that a move to a cashless society is really a tactic to further enrich the wealthiest, greediest, and most powerful at the expense of everyone else. All this talk about coin shortages could be a tactic to usher in a cashless society.
All this talk about coin shortages could be a tactic to usher in a cashless society.
One of many, I'd wager. They've already got us literally using monopoly money:
Just a literary note:
In The Handmaid's Tale, society has gone cashless. Unbeknownst to everyone til it happens, the bankers put a special code on any credit card/account belonging to a woman. When the theocrats take power, they seize all of the money of all of the women and cancel all their credit cards, the banks are complicit.
...the banks are complicit.
Oh...sort of like it is in reality? ;-)
Sharing this from elsewhere, it is from a Dr. Brandon Bikowski, in AZ:
This week I was one of the COVID doctors in the hospital. Before I went on service, I had planned to share my experiences when I got home after my last shift. That didn't happen because I was mentally and emotionally exhausted after being at the hospital for 15+ hours.
I am going to try to break things down so that the general public can understand, because I want everyone, not just my fellow healthcare workers, to be as scared as I am.
This is going to be long, but hopefully will be worth the read for someone.
For references purposes, I am a Hospitalist, which is sort of like your primary care doctor when you're in the hospital. We manage your chronic medical conditions and most of your acute issues in the hospital and consult specialists when we need additional help with complex decision making or a specialized procedure to be performed. We are also the primary point of contact for your nurse on most issues.
I live in Arizona, the current COVID-19 hot spot. Arizona never really closed. Any level of closure that we obtained was the result of petitions with thousands of signatures from physicians. Despite pretty much being able to do anything you wanted to do except get your hair/nails done or eat out at a restaurant (carry out stayed open), people protested the state being closed. The state reopened immediately when criteria were put out to guide how and when states should reopen. To be clear, Arizona did not meet a single criteria for reopening. In addition, masks were not mandated. Governor Ducey avoided mandating masks and made it the responsibility of city Mayors to make any mandates. Mandatory masks were just implemented a few days ago.
As you have almost certainly seen in the news, the rapid reopening without mandated masks has been catastrophic. In a couple of weeks we have gone from a few hundred cases per day to around 3,500 cases per day. A few weeks ago, I was working at the COVID-free hospital designated to be the primary elective surgery campus within the network. The past few days, our recently reopened COVID Unit has been near or completely full. I shared the patient's on the unit with one other hospitalist.
Before I went on service this week, I read anything and everything I could to prepare myself to be the COVID doc. I was up to date on all of the latest recommendations. I was a little nervous, but felt like I was armed with the information that would allow me to help my patients.
I quickly learned that there is no possible way to prepare for how to treat a COVID patient. There is no rhyme, reason, or pattern. There is no possible way to predict what will happen with your patient.
In my sign out to the doc taking over for me today, I prefaced the individual patient sign outs with, "one slightly improving, one with less oxygen requirements but possible new liver failure developing, everyone else getting worse."
I have never seen anything like this. None of us have. We have no idea what we are doing. We are sharing evidence from small studies that could help and utilizing treatments that we think and hope are helpful. Of course, we also thought hydroxychloroquine was helpful a couple of months ago. So, we're hopefully helping people, maybe hurting them, and trying our best. We are flipping people on their stomachs while wide awake on a machine pushing oxygen into their lungs to try and help; this is called the prone position, and it works, but you're stuck in that position for as long as we can keep you there. The longer the better. Anyone on supplemental oxygen is receiving dexamethasone based on the European study that came out last week. We were using Remdesivir, but a patient I admitted two days ago is the last one that will receive it from our current stockpile. Convalescent plasma from patients that had COVID, recovered, and donated plasma is being administered, but studies suggest that antibody concentration diminishes by up to 90% within 2-3 months, so who knows if that's even doing anything.
I realized in the past two days that oxygen saturation numbers that you see on the machines are completely worthless in many COVID patients. So, the one thing we thought we knew, that COVID causes profound hypoxia, was true, but it's actually much worse than we thought. In order to figure out if you are hypoxic (low blood oxygen levels), a needle is stuck into an artery in your wrist as often as is needed. It hurts. A lot. I will have a needle stuck into your artery as often as I need to. I'm sorry, I know it hurts, but it's for your own good.
In any other time, most of my patients would already be intubated on a ventilator. We are managing so many critically ill patients on regular hospital floors. If we sent everyone to the ICU that would normally be there based on their current status and put them all on ventilators, all resources would be depleted in a day.
The patients I cared for the past few days were the most miserable, uncomfortable, terrified patients I have seen in the past four years. I sat with them while they cried because they are scared that they will get worse and get intubated and die without ever seeing their loved ones again. I can't comfort them by saying they'll get better soon, because I don't know that they will. All I can tell them is that we're doing everything we can and I really hope they improve. I held a patients hand while she cried and screamed, "oh my god, I'm going to die, aren't I? I'm dying" when I told her we couldn't give her more oxygen without intubating her and putting her on life support. I then tried to comfort her children over the phone after I informed them they were not allowed to come in to the hospital to be with her. They asked if someone could be there to comfort her if she is going to die.
Many of my patients were young. Many have no underlying conditions that predispose them to a bad outcome, yet are one bad blood oxygen reading away from needing to be intubated.
COVID does not care who you are.
I am scared and you should be, too.
All of that is to send the following message:
Please, please, stay home if you can. If you need to go out, WEAR A MASK! Do not touch your face. Wash your hands and sanitize often. I can't promise you won't end up in the hospital with COVID even if you do all of these things, but I promise it's the best shot you've got.
P.S. THANK YOU to all the amazing RNs, RTs, PCTs, Pharmacists, Pharmacy techs, lab techs, physical, occupational & speech therapists, social workers, case managers, environmental service workers, and everyone else that makes it possible to care for these patients in the best way we know how. You don't get enough credit. You all are the real MVPs.
______________________________________
ADDENDUM: To be clear, COVID-19 is caused by a virus. This is a PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS. It is not, never has been, and never will be a political issue. Politics have played a huge role in getting us into this mess, and it's time to cut them out. COVID doesn't discriminate, and it definitely doesn't care who you're going to vote for. When you see/hear/read anything related to COVID-19, pay attention to who is posting the information. If it is not coming from a medical professional, question your source.
______________________________________
ADDENDUM-2: I am so incredibly shocked at how widely this has been shared. Thank you all! Please continue to share! Since people are reading this, I would like to use this platform to ask you to PLEASE talk with your loved ones about your wishes. If you have an advance directive, please bring it with you if you are unfortunately in need of hospitalization. If you do not have an advance directive, it's time to get one. If we do not know what you would like to be done, we assume that the answer is everything. If your loved one or listed MPOA is unaware of your wishes, they will likely also err on the side of doing everything. Help them to make those very difficult decisions by making your wishes known. Do not wait until you are in the hospital, because it may be too late. Please look up what it means to be "full code" vs "DNR/DNI." Know what you would want done to you.