Originally Posted by Old Man Mike View Post
I received this statement from a close friend who knows this MD researcher. The researcher is the head of the infectious disease department at the U of M, one of the country's leading research labs on these matters. In my opinion, his opinions are worth passing along.
Dear friends,
In these unprecedented and eerie times I felt the need to send an email with my thoughts and recommendations. Doing so has helped me organize my thoughts and outline a plan forward for myself and my family. Feel free to forward this email to others, or ignore it if you must (I prefer that you don’t do the latter).
To remind folks, I am an infectious diseases specialist and my entire career has been spent in infection prevention. A good chunk of time has been spent on pandemic preparation and response.
So here it goes. Some take home messages and recommendations:
1) This is the real deal. A bona fide serious pandemic. The media is not overreacting.
2) Anthony (Tony) Fauci speaks the truth and has tons of experience – trust his opinions and recommendations
3) This is an unprecedented pandemic in our lifetimes – H1N1 in 2009 was a pandemic but illness was much milder and we had a vaccine and proven treatments and it was somewhat of a known entity being an influenza variant.
4) Practice social distancing – avoid all public places and interactions with others outside of your household except for things like getting food and pharmacy visits (and let me know if you find a good toilet paper source J). This is especially important for older adults and those with serious underlying illnesses – and for those living with or having contact with these high risk people.
5) Walking or running and walking your dog outside is fine – unless your region or area has specific restrictions that don’t allow this. But keep your distance from others except your family/household members
6) Your kids and family members should all practice social distancing. My kids are not seeing friends or socializing outside the house.
7) Remember, if younger people (like your kids) get infected, they will likely become mildly ill or be asymptomatic (although they also can get really sick) – but even if mildly ill or asymptomatic, they can pass the virus on easily to household members and high risk people like older adults (ex grandparents) and people with severe underlying diseases (like those with lung disease and heart disease and immuno-compromised individuals). In high risk people, infection often results in severe illness or death.
8) I anticipate this extreme level of response/social distancing to last likely at least 4-12 more weeks, but I really don’t know – it’s just a guess. The actual outbreak and responses to the outbreak will last much longer, but this extreme phase of containment effort and social distancing will, in my estimation, last a few months.
9) As my fellow ID colleague and close friend John Engemann said, “You will be lucky in a few months if you don’t know someone who dies from COVID-19.”
10) So be a good citizen, practice social distancing, wash your hands a lot (alcohol sanitizer is a good alternative) and have your family do the same. And try to not to drive your family members crazy (or let them drive you crazy) - the house starts to feel small really quickly : )
So be safe, stay home and be a good citizen and spend tons of quality time with your family : )
End of his e-mail.
It is my belief that the virtual lockdown recommendations will last until we get a good test kit well distributed, and a vaccine.
