Comment ne pas faire de la situation actuelle une répétition générale d'événements plus graves encore.
Situation sanitaire et économique, considérée avec un zeste d'éthique et un espoir de responsabilisation de chacun et de chaque gouvernement.
Si le texte est en anglais, la vidéo en est la traduction française.
CORONAVIRUS COVID19 CAN BE FOUGHT BY WEARING RED SOCKS… Between solid information and commands… people have the right to get properly informed, in an adult and responsible manner.
Hereunder my answer to a friend living overseas, who wrote me how stunned he feels about the US measures.
On my side, during a talk with a close American friend, I learned more about a few aspects of prevention than what I have been informed on while working as a caregiver. Among others I learned that the Covid 19 virus does not adhere to porous surfaces, which is why cloth masks to wear outside, washable, could be useful for the population. How is this possible ? Culture difference between a very traditional country and one where scientific popularization is encouraged, enabling people to get empowered.
I feel that some people just obey orders with no questioning whatsoever, reason why I chosed that provocative title. Of course not, wearing red socks has no influence on any virus whatsoever. Being out in nature taking the sun on one’s own neither, by the way…
Between science, ethics and daily life, here it goes.
My dear friend,
I think I'll wait until I can get my blood tested for antibodies whenever it becomes possible. If you knew the way we treat sick people until they really lack oxygen... nothing is done or about.
If only it were taken care of that way only in the US ! I have been following the international situation closely, very interested in health topics, as you know. The only appropriate responses were given in Corea and in some extent in China, as well as in Singapore : systematic testing, quarantine of those who turn out to be tested positive, entire areas being likely to be quarantined but not everybody, just like that, in the entire country, and medical treatment of patients with symptoms, even mild ones. Masks used as a major prevention tool.
The thing is.... strong, organized and somehow very directive procedures to follow happen an easier way in less democratic countries, where people are less focused on self rights and individual determination. Democracy versus community health ? In Switzerland, people have a way of functioning that follows what the authorities say that we have to do, even with little or no repression, so this is working out pretty well just now.
But the masks, the ventilators, even the disinfectants... and the tests !!!! We are one of the richest countries in the world and they have all been missing by us as well ! The official communication following the masks' availability, which is REALLY bad : 1.Yes, chirurgical masks (like the ones I use at work) will protect you 2. (once they started missing) No, they don't. It takes more sophisticated masks to protect you, in the PP category 3. (now that we can again order them) Yes, masks protect you and maybe what we'll do is have the population wear them when people are outside.
So do those masks protects us or not ? And how could the official communication ever include this : they protect the others from you (from "spitting", breathing "on" them), but they do not protect you from the others (how come ? when what we are talking about are paper masks ??? How could they have a protection that differs from inside out than from outside in ?!!!).
So, for once, I am no longer sure that DT is the worst president on earth. I don't know what news you're getting from France but what is happening there is to my eyes the worst happening in Europe. French people do what they do best and what they seem specialized in to the eyes of many in other European countries : they argue and verbally attack each other. Specialists try to have official blockings of other specialists' trials for the apparent main sake of being told they were the bests and the first ones to give appropriate treatments and they seem to forget about the real good of their patients on the way. Chloroquine IS effective on viruses, the scientific and medical world has known that since a long time. Even if it will not bring the numbers of deaths down to zero and if some people will not be able to have it due to its side-effects, making it hazardous for people with heart diseases, for instance, the reason why so many patients did not get treated with it seems to be related to ego-based concurrence and scientific stubbornness rather than to the properties of that molecule. It is a shame.
Some caregivers, mainly in homes for elderly people wear no mask, since they are lacking : in France, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Italy... The rate of caregivers who got sick is very high in France and in Italy since they are lacking protective medical material.
It was said that Northern Italy has a very modern and top-level health care system... well, obviously in very modern hospitals they were lacking caregivers, medical doctors, material... so what is the point to build new specialized places if you do not follow up by having enough people working on the spot and enough medical supply ?
In every country the borders should have been closed and the local people coming back from abroad should have all been tested and quarantined on the spot, not travelling back home from the airports to their place, with no test, no mask... It is what it takes if the virus is as transmissible as we are told it is.
I do not think that it is by chance that in Switzerland the areas most touched are the ones by the borders, where people travel back and forth to come to work by us, and in urban places.
Portugal has only one border and people started to stay home pretty early in the pandemy and in no way the situation is close to what it is in Spain. Spain that, like Italy, seems to have a high rate of elderly people.
Boris Johnson has been harshly criticized by other European countries for referring to the concept of community immunity. Actually this immunity does exist and is the one that settles in with vaccination campaigns.
So here in Europe people die mainly because they are allowed to go to the hospital only when their health strongly deteriorates. We do not treat early symptoms another way than by saying "please stay at home" and prescribing cough drops (OMG!!!) and if people die it is because we are lacking places in hospitals ! This also sounds like something that could occur in 3rd world countries, like you mention it for the US.
We are paying a very high price for globalization, for health care systems that benefit mostly to rich people (you can get surgery for about anything, in any health condition, but we do not know how to master a pandemy !!! ???), for delocalization, actually for decades of focusing on money, profit and a way of life that brings us very far away from the shores of health and wellbeing....
Kind of got carried away, mainly because we now observe the effects of political choices, with which I, like others, am disagreeing since about 2 decades...
So you see, I think the worst is not especially happening in the US right now, but in all the so-called industrial Western countries.
We better all wake up really quickly but I am not sure we will. Also like quite a few others, I think that what we are facing now is just a litlle burden compared to what is going to happen if we do not act right away to prevent a climate change even worse than the one we are dealing with at the moment. In a total indifference, millions of people die each year from air pollution related illnesses. And I do not mention the ones who have not enough to eat, to drink nor to treat any bacterial infection.
Welcome to the world as it is in 2020 !...
Well, do not know if "cheers" is appropriate just now so rather : take care.
Isabelle