Flu numbers going down?

[Morning-glory]

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/07/17/health-minister-canada-swine-flu.html

numbers slip

interestingly, however, canada might have less of a need for the drug than first supposed as the swine flu situation stabilizes across the country.

while some troublesome pockets with high rates of infection persist, the overall canadian situation appears to be under control, the health minister said.

"we have seen a decrease in the number of hospital visits by people with flu-like symptoms," aglukkag said.

since mid-june, canada has experienced a drop in the weekly incidence of h1n1. the country saw 2,000 new cases of the infection in the week ending june, but only 740 new cases in the period ending wednesday.

what are these people doing? ok, so the numbers have slowed down but the reality is that they have stopped testing everone that has come in with flu-like symptoms. just because the numbers are down, doesn't mean they won't come back up in the fall when it gets to be our real flu season. "under control"? this i will have to see.

i believe that this flu will knock all of these people off their little clouds and bring them back to earth with a bump come october. unless they already know and are just stringing us a line to keep us from getting worried. how will this kind of clap-trap help us in the long run? people need to get ready now. waiting till november when it will be in full bloom will not be the time to tell people to get ready.

you should have all the basics needed for a week in your home now. meds, food, water. this is not a huge burden folks. yes, there are people with 3 months worth of food and that does make a lot of sense and provides people with a sense of security, but one week is a good start. doing that now will save you the mad crush of people when the powers that be start saying that they will not be able to ensure an intact delivery system for the stuff that we need everyday. what if the power goes out? water system fails? these can be fixed, but having lived in an area that was hit by an ice storm a decade ago, i have some experience with nothing working. some people were without power for a month in the middle of winter. the stories were sad. old folks moved out of their homes and into shelters, cows dying because there was no power to run the milking machines, people stealing generators, etc. if you live in an urban center, a week's worth would suffice. out in the country, a bigger stockpile would be in order.

keep it simple and stockpile food you would normally eat. introducing "wierd stuff" to your family in stressful situations is not recommended. also if you are the only one who can cook in your house, what happens if you get too sick to get out of bed, nevermind cook? kd and canned stews get boring after a while.

food for thought. no pun intended (well, maybe a little one).

[oramar]

Like you said, cases are down because they have stopped counting. There is another reason, kids are out of school. Just wait till they go back. It will percolate all summer and when they kids get back in school, BAM.

[Morning-glory]

It just chaps my saddle when these people start disseminating this garbage. What are they trying to do? What are they not telling us? Yes, they are getting organized with ventilators, but how about the staff to provide the care? They haven't gotten that far yet. Are they going to yank ventilators from the chronic care patients to save people with the flu? They have willy-wallied around that question. No where have they said "no way". So that is still one of the possibilities. If the flu gets worse and they need every single vent available, who looses? What happens if they have the vents and no staff? Give someone a 2 hour vent orientation and voila? My vent training was a week long and 2 years looking after vented people. I now work psych. Does anyone in my hospital know that I have this training? NO. Are there other staff in the building that have specialized training that they are not aware of? Most likely. What kind of plan is all of this? We are going to be up to our necks in alligators. I have started to make noise at work about this, but we may already be getting to close to the line.

All of the mentally ill are going to be sent home unless they are certified. All of the certified in the city will be sent to us to care for. The rest will have to try and cope at home with limited support. So we ship them out and hope they can manage on their own? Bipolars, schizophrenics, all acute, all out fending for themselves? They are in the hospital for a reason. These people are not coping, their families are not coping, so in the middle of a flu crisis they will all learn to cope overnight?

It is just so unrealistic. What happens when our patients get the flu? Where would they be on the totem pole of the ventilator priority list? They are people too, with families and friends.

Pfft...

End of vent for now.

[indigo girl]

All of the mentally ill are going to be sent home unless they are certified. All of the certified in the city will be sent to us to care for. The rest will have to try and cope at home with limited support. So we ship them out and hope they can manage on their own? Bipolars, schizophrenics, all acute, all out fending for themselves? They are in the hospital for a reason. These people are not coping, their families are not coping, so in the middle of a flu crisis they will all learn to cope overnight?

I work on a psych unit that has no hospital type beds, and no piped in oxygen. The beds are bolted to the floor, and are not adjustable in any way so that it is not possible to raise the head up. There is no way to care for anyone who needs to be in isolation for any respiratory illness. Oxygen has to be brought into the room with a concentrator or a tank.

Our patients typically come to us after a stay in the ER. Depending on how busy it is down there, they might come up rather quickly. During the coming flu season, if there are many cases of flu in the community as I suspect that there will be, it is entirely possible that they will not screen out someone that is infected, but not showing symptoms yet. It could take from 5 to 7 days from date of exposure before it becomes apparent that a patient is infected. Some of our patients are not going to be cooperative with requests to cover their coughs, to stay in their rooms, or wash their hands before touching the hallway phone or the community coffee pot. I foresee problems.

Will we all be doing med-surg this fall, I wonder?

My hospital just put up a flu hotline this past week for staff to call, and notified us via e-mail at work. During off hours when Employee Health is not open, our Poison Control Center will take calls from staff. So far this is all that they have done to get us ready.

One of our techs is married to a pregnant nurse in our hospital. This past week she took care of a patient with suspected swine flu. No one said anything to her about the CDC guidelines for pregnant staff which recommend that pregnant staff be re-assigned, or if that is not possible, should not be present for procedures such as nebulizer treatments or C-PAP/Bi-PAP. She was very upset to find out that there were CDC guidelines that the hospital did not tell her about.

Just some random thoughts here in July when this all seems far away...

[Girl Scout]

I tell you, the more I read, the more I just want to slap my forehead.

It just seems to me that it's more and more likely that once this returns in the fall, hospitals will be asking for anyone with any medical training to report for duty. It just feels like it's just going to be mainly be an epic need for staff, even if beds ran out a long time ago. But what will we do when we do run out of beds, like you said, start kicking patients out that aren't critical with the flu but actually do need to be there? It's not like we can stack pts up in chairs in the halls and say a prayer that 20 more nurses show up.

Frustrated. Hum.

[Morning-glory]

As you all may have noticed, I had a bit of an anxiety attack over this issue this morning. I still think that the sidewalk is no place to be if you are mentally ill. I'm sure some of them would prefer it to being hospitalized, but still. They are vulnerable. It will be winter, and here it is a real winter.

What if the hospital wants people there for a week at a time? Like a sleep over at work? There is no room to plunk people down for the night, unless they close the day clinics, and even then, it will not house a full complement of staff.

As indigo was saying, we have no real hospital facilities. No O2, beds bolted to the floor, some we can crank up but only one crank per ward. No available sinks in patient areas. And because we are a self standing mental health facility, we get the patients from the acute care hospitals admitted to us after being cleared. Even our code cart is a severely cut down version of the real thing. No IV's, no meds, just an airway or two along with a suction machine and an automatic defib. The thing is that this has sufficed for the everyday business of doing things as if anyone gets sick they get sent back to the acute care hospital down the road. Obviously in a pandemic situation, this will not be adequate.

Senario- Pandemic in full swing. Sick people all over and then the hospital runs out of psychotropic meds. I can see us all scambling to find a doctor and having a similar discussion.

Nurse: We are out of olanzapine, but we do have some haldol and ativan available for the moment.

Doc: That's it? What about this patients regular meds?

Nurse: we ran out last night.

Doc: Whaddaya mean we ran out?

Nurse: Nothing left in the cupboard. We'll be down to vitamins and asprin in a couple of days. Any chance you could find us more of anything, anywhere? I think the nurses will start coming down with the flu if we don't get anything soon.

Doc: Why would the nurses start getting sick now?

Nurse: If we run out of meds there is not enough money in the world that would keep a psych nurse locked in a ward with no psych meds for the patients.

Yikes!!!

Anyway, time for a cup of tea and bed.