EDITORIAL COMMENT by Morgan Rees
Dr Lorna M. Breen (48 year old), a top ER doctor at a Manhattan hospital that treated large numbers of coronavirus patients took her own life. She mentioned experiencing distressing scenes she had witnessed. Dr Breen’s father, Dr Philip C. Breen, said: “She tried to do her job, and it killed her.
This is terrible and a great loss. I think the AMA and US Government (At least California has a Government) has to expeditiously address this since this is just the beginning. I have heard a dozen interviews with Doctors and Nurse saying they have never firsthand experienced so many deaths (And shellshocked crying families) in such a short amount of time. These Healthcare Professionals are in meltdown.
It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with 1918 influenza virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million victims worldwide, other estimates run as high as 100 million victims—around 3 percent of the world’s population.
By prematurely stopping the stay-at-home isolation a second, highly contagious wave of influenza appeared with a vengeance in the fall of that same year. Victims died within hours or days of developing symptoms, their skin turning blue and their lungs filling with fluid that caused them to suffocate. In just one year, 1918, the average life expectancy in America plummeted by a dozen years.
What the 1918 influenza epidemic has taught us is to not prematurely stop/lift our stay-at-home isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings to soon.
Our Doctors and Nurses in the trenches on the front line will be overwhelmed.
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
