The unofficial online home for fans of the Western Michigan University Broncos. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

In the last couple weeks these are things I know from close sources as well as news:

My cousins wife works rapid response team at a metro Detroit hospital that I used to work at. Her team responds to critically ill patients hopefully before they code. They also in ordinary times help transport to and from critical testing(CT, MRI,etc). She has a grasp of happenings on all units especially ICUs. a couple weekends ago she said they intubated 40 pts in a 24 hour period. An abnormally high number and this prior to the current uptick of cases. The COVID pts don’t just stay on a vent for a couple days, in some cases they are vented up to 3 weeks! The ventilator shortage is real, ECMO is a fraction of the number of vents but a last ditch effort to keep people alive.

https://www.wnem.com/news/respiratory-th...55881.html

A co-worker has seen multiple refrigerated trailers at her main account last week. They aren’t delivering early Thanksgiving turkeys. Those are makeshift morgues as NYC is now having to resort to. Having transported patients at a 1000+ bed hospital, I know that our morgue held maybe 20 stretchers very tightly. Pathology cooler probably could hold another 6.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...klift.html

Per my cousins wife, Nursing staff is getting short. Our first line defense is getting sick and fatigued. Drs and nurses are being brought in from outlying areas to help staff critical situations in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb. One of the women that my sister had graduated H.S. with had passed yesterday from C19, she was a nurse. Not clear if she contracted it on the job? They are facing a nightmare situation that doesn’t appear to be slowing any time soon. They may be treating family, friends and co-workers. Health care workers will be experiencing PTSD on the level that the VA is treating. My sister is being trained back up to work bedside, currently works oncology office but had many years in ER. Hopefully these patients that need lifesaving procedures and care are not collateral damage to this pandemic.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/loca...stay-home/

The NAIAS at "Cobo" has been cancelled this summer. Army Corps of engineers are helping to transform TCF center to a field hospital. Not sure how many beds it could hold probably in excess of 1000. How would it and McCormick in Chicago be staffed if the local hospitals are already short?

https://www.crainsdetroit.com/coronaviru...tcf-center

A former next door neighbor has come down with the disease. He’s a great guy, retired from Chrysler. We were saddened when he and his wife moved to a smaller house, just 1/2 mile away. Was like having another set of parents next door. He’s currently quarantined at home. We are very concerned because he has pneumonia w/C19 and his wife has multiple health issues.

On a positive note my company has announced a lead candidate for a possible vaccine with Phase 1 trial beginning this fall. Production of 1 billion doses will commence as trials are being conducted. Also, at this time there is a common enemy and competing companies are on the same side of this battle. It’s good to see that Abbott has made a 5 min test available. I first saw them announce this on LinkedIn the other day and the president mentioned it in today’s presser. He also announced that an Ohio company, Battelle, has the capability of reprocessing N95 masks for reuse. Up to 80,000 can be decontaminated per day.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/rapid-coro...d=69875037

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati...936670001/

The exponential growth is continuing. We are still trending toward 1MM C19 cases worldwide by early April. If not slowed 10MM by late April.

This is an excellent channel and his analysis since I’ve been listening, Feb, has been spot on. Not enough people have been paying attention. I’ll post this from a week ago because he addresses the fallacies of the numerator(deaths)/denominator(total cases). And the bad policies that have led to this and opinions that may lead to further critical blunders.

https://youtu.be/7YN7aBiICz4