Part Five
By the end of week eight...
The city has experienced a total of just under 5,000 cases, roughly 4% of the population. 432 have had to be admitted to some kind of health care facility, 196 have died & a mere 139 patients have been discharged. Easily another hundred COULD be discharged as their medical conditions have become stable but they're simply too weak to care for themselves & have no one to turn to for assistance.
A good 3,000 cases have consisted of older children & young adults - most appear to be recovering but of those very young or old, a considerable number have died. Public health has yet to release the details but have announced they expect some relapses & more deaths. So far the city has coped - barely. Three young city hall staffers have done nothing but keep a detailed record of decisions, actions & the results/consequences of those actions for future planning purposes. Some the data are grim & 'future planning' would appear to be sooner than anyone might hope for.
The pandemic wave is waning in Asia, peaking in Europe & it's hoped another week or 2 will see drop offs in cases. There had better be, health care workers are so fatigued, many are slipping up & contracting the flu themselves. The saving grace has been the work of the various students. Most learned what was needful quickly & have worked their butts off. They've learned a lot the hard way but such situations don't permit the luxury of reflection... or tears. Time way from work is spent eating & sleeping for most of them.
Emergency services are hurting badly. A series of incidents & illness have taken almost 50 police officers off duty leaving the city dangerously undermanned. The military police platoon is filling as best they can & students from the college Police Foundations program have been helping out. But overall matters cannot go on this way. Everything is by now, in short supply.
The end of week nine brings some hope. There have been only an additional 343 cases, a sharp decline. A/California has long left the equation & other respiratory ailments have faded quickly with warmer spring weather. So far the outbreak has seen an estimated total of 5,243 cases. 502 have required hospitalization & so far 253 have died - a sad increase. 187 have been discharged from the hospitals, clearing space & relieving the swamped health care staff somewhat. Admissions are expected to increase however even as case numbers drop. People are highly stressed at this point & many of the flu patients have pre-existing conditions. Some don't have the medication they need & most have been unable to get other required treatments,. They're beginning to contract secondary infections of the more 'interesting' sort - multiply drug resistant infections & increasingly patients are displaying a neurological component.
Nevertheless with new cases dropping quickly, the city can look to a resolution of this ordeal.... for now. It has been a grim reminder that we're never as far as we'd like to think from pandemic. We're never as prepared as we'd like to think. We CAN cope though & it can be surprising who proves to be the most resourceful, the most innovative with time saving & life saving ideas. Hopefully, all affected staff can get a much needed break soon.
The second wave is coming & history has proven this to be the worst of all. Across the world infectious disease & flu specialists are analysing data, trying to pin down if the virus is undergoing more change, more recombination. They're assessing treatments that were tried - how they worked. If they did. They're trying to determine what groups of people may be the most vulnerable in the next wave. And they're hoping the vaccine in production will work. There's not going to be nearly enough of that anyway. And possibly the worst thing of all, in all affected regions of the world where Tamiflu was available, it no longer works.
Okay, that's enough 'super-grim' for one day. The longer I thought about this, the more I realized my city is going to be totally screwed when this happens. We're not prepared, won't be prepared & the shortages of resources I mentioned all exist & as badly as I've stated. I was probably wonderfully generous in terms of the discussions about co-operation, conversion of assets to different purposes... in reality it would take far longer for many of the involved parties to GET it. But I can dream, can't I? Either way, pandemic is a shitty prospect.
But this has been a downer, really. Time to look at other stuff for a few hours. Tomorrow I'll explain what sorts of things might be happening during the 'inter-wave' period, then gallop into second wave stuff. Enough of this thread for tonight...
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